


John Winchester's Journal

by rachelarcher



Series: Winchester Gospels - When All Is Said And Done [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Multi, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-30
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-11-21 10:31:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 28
Words: 36,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11355651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rachelarcher/pseuds/rachelarcher
Summary: John Winchester's Journal(Seriously read the published one - it is amazing)This is the one that has been altered to meet the Winchester Gospel series.





	1. Chapter 1

This should be read with the Winchester series, I might put it first or last, but for now, it is just the first chapter, which is the pictures. If you have questions about pictures selected, let me know and I will explain them as best I can. After the Pictures are done, like group pictures, the Journal pages will start showing up, they are images too. Sorry not sorry. I hope you enjoy! I should have the journal part done and ready to go in like four days, it is mostly typed it is adding side stories and pictures from the original that is taking time.

-/- … -\\- 

**KRISSY CHAMBERSON**  
[ ](https://imgbb.com/)

**DOROTHY OF OZ**  
[ ](https://imgbb.com/)

**EILEEN LEAHY**  
[ ](https://imgbb.com/)

**GARTH AND BESS**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/dpgs2k)

**COLE TRENTON**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/c4wgv5)

**ASH**  
[](https://imgbb.com/)

  
**DEACON**  
[](https://ibb.co/hamgv5)  


  
**RUFUS TURNER**  
[](https://ibb.co/cExX2k)  


**BOBBY SINGER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/jxjC2k)

**KEVIN TRAM**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/nnGgv5)

**GABRIEL**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/bAzZF5)

**MARY WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/maoTa5)

**JOHN WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/hta8a5)

**CROWLEY**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/nnLKhk)

**CASTIEL**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/k9e1v5)

**ELLEN HARVELLE**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/dhtTa5)

**JOANNA BETH HARVELLE**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/mwUO8Q)

**MEG MASTERS**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/fJkKhk)

**MICHAEL**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/cqCbTQ)

**SAMANDRIEL - ALFIE**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/iuOTa5)

**CLAIRE NOVAK WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/fhGgv5)

**ALEX ANNIE MILLS**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/gduehk)

**JODY MILLS**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/c5ws2k)

**DONNA MILLS**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/j2NAoQ)

**ROWENA McLEOD**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/czkVoQ)

**BALTHAZAR**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/cOSzhk)

**CHARLIE BRADBURY**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/cPDGTQ)

**GADREEL**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/guAVoQ)

**ADAM WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/g3fkNk)

**DEAN WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/iFbQNk)

**SAMUEL WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/dVt5Nk)

**LUCAS WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/fwJGTQ)

**BEN WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/nujZF5)

**BARTHOLEMEW**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/ccEqoQ)

**LUCIFER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/hnjjF5)

**CARTER WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/kkyBv5)

**ELLIOTT WINCHESTER**  
[ ](https://ibb.co/nCMmTQ)


	2. John's Journal - 1983

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 1983

**1983  
November 16:**

I went to Missouri and learned the truth. And from her, I met Fletcher Gable, who gave me this book and said, “Write everything down.” That’s what Fletcher told me, like this new life is a school and I will flunk out if I don’t have good notes. Only if I flunk out of this school, I will be DEAD. And my three wonderful children will be orphans. So I am going to go back to where this started.

Two weeks ago, my wife was murdered. I watched her die, pinned to the ceiling of Sammy’s room, blood dripping onto his cradle until she burst into flames – looking at me as she died. The week before that we were a normal family… eating dinner, going to Dean’s t-ball game, potty training Carter, buying toys for baby Sammy. But in an instant, it all changed… When I try to think back, get it straight in my head… I feel like I’m going crazy. Like someone ripped both my arms off, plucked my eyes out…   
I’m wandering around, alone and lost, and I can’t do anything…

Mary used to write books like this one. She said it helped her remember all the little things, about the babies, me… I wish I could read her journals, but like everything else, they’re gone. Burned into nothing. She always wanted me to try to write things down. Maybe she was right, maybe it will help me to remember, to understand. Fletcher seems to think so.

Nothing makes sense anymore… My wife is gone, my children without their mother… the things I saw that night, I remember hearing Mary scream, and I ran, but then… everything was calm, just for a second… Sammy was fine – I was sure I had been hearing things – too many horror movies too late at night. But then there was the blood, and when I looked up, my wife…

Half our house is gone, even though the fire only burned for a few hours... most of our clothes and photos are ruined, even our safe – the safe with Mary’s old diaries, the passbooks for the kid’s college accounts, what little jewelry we had… all gone. How could my house, my whole life, go up like that, so fast, and so hot? How could my wife just burn up and disappear?

I want my wife back, oh God, I want her back.

I thought at first that we would stay. Mike and Kate helped me take care of the kids at first, and Julie’s been great too, but I tried to tell them – tell Mike – what I think happened that tonight. He just looked at me, this look… like he’s sure I’m crazy. He must have told Kate something too. Out of nowhere she said the next morning, I should think about seeing a shrink. How can I talk to a stranger about this? I never saw a shrink for everything I went through in the Marines, and I got through that. My friends think I am going insane. Who knows maybe I am…

The way Carter looks at me sometimes, well, I’ll get to that.

The police quit on the case as soon as they couldn’t pin it on me. They don’t care that she was on the ceiling, they don’t care about the blood on her stomach or about any of the things I’ve seen since then. 

They want a tidy answer. Doesn’t matter to them whiter it’s the right one. The last time I talked to them, a week after she died, they asked me the same questions they asked me the night of the fire. 

_Where was I? How was my relationship with Mary in the weeks prior to the fire? Any problems with Dean, Carter or Sammy?_

I can tell where they’re going.

Mary’s Uncle Jacob had a funeral for her back in Pontiac, Illinois, where she was from. I didn’t go. Why? There was nothing to bury, and I don’t think I could have listened to what anyone there would have said. I’ve been drinking too much, trailing off in the middle of sentences. I hear things at night while I sit in the baby’s room. Everything lately feels like one of those instances where you remember a dream from a few days after you had it, but then you can’t remember what the dread was or if it actually happened. I keep going over that night in my head… why did I ever get out of bed. I left my wife by herself to go watch television, and she died.

I am so sorry Mary.

Dean still hardly talks. Carter has returned to sucking her thumb, her little fist balled up tight in Dean’s. I try to make small talk, or ask Dean if he wants to throw the baseball around. Anything to make him feel like a normal kid again. He never budges from my side – or from Carter and Sammy. Every morning when I wake up Dean and Carter are in the crib with Sammy, one on each side of him, the three wound tight around each other. It’s like they are trying to protect him from whatever is out there in the night.

Sammy cries a lot. Wanting his mom. I don’t know how to stop of it, and part of me doesn’t want to. It breaks my heart to think soon he won’t remember you at all Mary. I can’t let your memory die. I won’t.

Carter knows how to sooth him, more than me, and she is barely two.

 

Woke up yesterday morning with a nasty hangover… wasn’t in the mood to do much of anything, much less have a heart-to-heart with Mike, who jumped me the second I walked into the kitchen, I guess that’s his right, since it was his house. He was going on about how I have to get myself together, for our kids… but he seemed more concerned about the garage than anything else. Accusing me of phoning it in, you’ve barely been to work…. No kidding I’ve barely been to work… my wife is dead; something horrible happened to her… are the kids at risk too? My kids? My Dean? Carter? Sammy? How can I forget about all that and go into work?

Anyway, I told him he could have it. The garage, it was only a place to work, something Mary had helped pushed me into doing. That stopped him cold. 

“You’re telling me you’re going to give up your life’s work over this?” Watch me, Mike. It’s yours. 

I walked out of the house with Mike’s check in hand. He wasn’t so worried about me that he wouldn’t let me go. Do I blame him? I don’t know. I took the kids back to Julie’s and went to the first check-cashing place I could find.

Walked out with enough cash to fill the back of the car with security. Two 12-gauge – Winchester 1300 pump and a Stevens 311 side-by-side. Spread of sidearms - good old Browning 9mm, .44 Desert Eagle, snub Ruger SP101, and a little pocket .22. That’ll do for a start.

Haven’t ever written anything this long in my life – hope I never do again.

Went to see Missouri for a second time, and I can’t explain it… it was like we’d been friends for years. She knew every detail not just of my life, but also of me… my thoughts… fears. She was the first person who didn’t look at me like I was crazy when I told her my story… she just listened and nodded, and then she told me that she believed me.

She also told me if I wanted answers I needed to make a sacrifice. A blood one. So I pulled out one of my own fingernails, like I did that every day. She had a vision, and we found a bloody mess in a neighbor’s house along with the words: **we’re coming for the children** written in blood. I don’t remember anything between that and finding Carter, Dean, and Sammy safe back at Julie’s. Thank God for that, but Julie… she was dead. Something just tore her apart. Missouri found a tooth in her body, I tried to draw it, but I can’t draw. I took the kids, and said goodbye to Missouri, and got the hell out of Lawrence.

If I never go back it will be too soon.

Not for Dean though, the first time he spoke since… well, and he wanted to know when we would go home. But we don’t have a home anymore, Dean. The sooner you get used to that, the better. Carter sucks her thumb until it bleeds her little chubby fist in Dean’s hand, Sammy asleep with Dean’s hand on his chest. We don’t have a home until we find what killed your mother, kids. Sorry.

First stop, Eureka.

Fletcher said we should start there.

**November 19:**

I’m going to try to write this down just as it happened, no matter how unbelievable. Because if I can’t believe it I – if I can’t rationally put into words what I saw – how is anyone else ever going to belie it?

Jacob showed up looking for the boys. Jacob Campbell, mentioned him earlier. I talked him into coming with me to the cemetery, where I thought there might be some answers, and I got him killed. The hellhound – that’s what Fletcher called it – came out of a crypt and it tore holes in him like I haven’t seen in a human since I was in Vietnam.

Then H was there. I don’t know who he is, but he saved my life like I couldn’t save Jacob’s. But he wouldn’t let me take Jacob to the hospital. He said Jacob was dying, and that whatever we were looking for, it was keeping him alive to prolong his suffering. I didn’t want to believe him, but he’d been right about what happened up until then… there was nothing we could do, according to H, and God help me, I went along with him, I stood there and watched while my car rolled into a quarry with Jacob dying inside.

And all H said was, “Guess you got a car somewhere?” that cold blooded bastard, I may learn from him, but I’ll never like him, and I’ll never trust him. He started talking about demons. Hellhounds, demons…

I let Jacob die. Could I have saved him? Maybe not, maybe H was right. But I didn’t even try. What am I becoming? I always tried to conduct myself to that if the kids asked me why I did something; I wouldn’t have to lie to them. But what am I going to say if they ever ask me about Uncle Jake? Both Carter and Dean know him. Sammy would have loved him.

**November 20:**

I killed a man in cold blood tonight.

No. I killed a shape shifting monster tonight to protect all of the people who don’t know monsters exist. But it would have looked like a man to all of those, and Dean saw me. Carter saw me.

It looked like Ichi, a hunter H took me out with. We were looking for a heeler, a kind of… something. Not a man. It attacks; it kills, then springs away before anyone can react. Springheel Jack, Jack the Ripper, was a heeler, and according to H. but H is the same guy who had me roll Jacob into a quarry, still alive.  
He was going to die. I know he was going to die. But he was still alive.

And then tonight, my oldest two, walked out of the roadhouse, right when I put the final bullet into the shape-shifters head. Dean asked “Why’d you kill him, Dad?” don’t get me wrong I am glad he is talking again. Carter won’t look at me, her eyes land only on her “Beanie.”

How am I supposed to answer that? Because he wasn’t a man, he was a monster who looked like a man? Dean and Carter walked out the door and saw me shoot someone in the head. 

Maybe I’m the monster who looks like a man.

H said he was going to start showing me the ropes. There are people who hunt monsters. They have a kind of network, moving through places like Bill and Ellen’s Roadhouse. Bill is a hunter, and they have a little girl. She’s not much older than Sammy, but Carter adores her. The hunters swap stories about what they have seen. They are all damaged, broken. They hate things they hunt. I am just like them.

Is it wrong to make the kids like me?

Ellen’s niece watched the boys while H took me and Ichi out looking for the shape-shifter, her name is Karen. Mary, you know I would never leave the babies with strangers I couldn’t trust, you know that right?

**November 21:**

The babies are with Pam and Bill in Elgin. I haven’t spent a night away from them since Mary died, and I can feel it like a hook in my gut, wanting to get back to them, protect them. But H says I need to talk to Mary, again, and if he can make that happen…

He goes on about demons. 

A demon killed his wife, he says, and just expects me to believe it. But what he looks like to me is someone who let grief turn him into a monster. Whatever happened to his wife, it doesn’t excuse what he’s done. And I can’t let myself turn into him. I’m not a hunter. I’m a husband and father who wants revenge for his wife.

Here’s what I wish I could say to Dean and Carter – 

Your brother’s too young to understand any of this, but you’re beginning to. And that scares me. Since your mother died, I’ve seen unspeakable things, and now you've seen them and that my fault. I feel the darkness o the road I am traveling on now. It’s not a place for you. On day you’ll see – I had to leave you today… but when I’m done, I promise you: the day will come when I never have to leave you again. 

Until then, I can only pray that you’re strong enough to look after Sam. I’m not.

 **November 24:**  
We’re on the way to somewhere, H and me, but I’m the rookie and I don’t get to ask where. He says he is taking me to meet someone who’s going to let me talk to Mary, but before that we need to do a couple things. 

A hunter never passes up a hunt.  
 **Never.**

This is what H says. So tonight we took on a strange kind of undead thing. H said it was a revenant, maybe? I don’t know what that is. Yet. I’ll find out.

People called it Doc Benton. He wanted to live forever, and when he couldn’t make alchemy work, he turned to organ theft instead. He kept himself alive by replacing each of his organs, as they failed one at a time, with organs harvested from unlucky locals. According to H, this has been going on since 1816. The doc was trouble, until I took him apart with a chainsaw after H burned the corpses of his most recent victims.

Lesson: burning the victim wakened the doc by depriving him go the power he’d gotten from those organs. According to H, you can solve a lot of problems with some gasoline and a match.

I need to learn more about revenants.

I need to learn more about everything.

**November 25:**

Today, in a town called Blue Earth, Minnesota, I met a crazy priest who brought Mary back to me. His name is Jim. But what he did today wasn’t like any church ritual I’ve ever seen, and I doubt he learned it in seminary. He cut himself, and his blood turned into fire, but it didn’t burn him. And then the fire turned into Mary.

**Mary.**

She said my name. I think she said some other things too, but hearing her voice say my name was … I can’t describe what it was lie. But it only lasted a few seconds and then she turned into a… I don’t know. Like a Black Shuck, a devil dog. A hellhound. It spoke to me, and said,

“Soon you will come to me.”

After it was gone, Jim looked at the hellhound’s tooth, there were numbers on it: 1127. Mary died at 11:27m according to the police report. H and Jim agreed that the numbers were some kind of coordinate carved into the tooth, but what does it mean?

Written in blood:

In olden times in the West people used to say, “I put my hand and seal”, on a document when singing it. In the East this was literal in some cases. The emperor of Japan in ancient days “signed” important documents by dipping his hand in blood and putting a full bloody handprint on the page. In history of pacts with the Devil, people were supposed to sign their names in blood. I have seen a couple of alleged pacts from earlier centuries and neither, as far as I can tell, was signed in blood, though they do bear signatures of people. Blood undoubtedly stressed the seriousness of the signing. You were giving away your soul. “The Blood Is the Life.”

**November 27:**

1700 miles in 24 hours flat, me and H handing the wheel back and forth, from Blue Earth to Tempe. Fletcher Gable. He showed us a map of cemeteries – Devil’s Gates, he called them. Places where demons can get through to our world. I don’t know about demons, but the map was divided into sections, and cemetery #112 in zone 7 was in Hope, Colorado – near the Four Corners.

I don’t know how to explain what happened there. The Fore Inn, set on the edge o a town full of dead bodies, hallucinations… we found the Inn and there was the hellhound, the Black Shuck, and it came to H like a spaniel. He said he didn’t kill Mary, but he did set the dog on me, and said he knew “some of the players involved”. But they weren’t demons, he said. I killed the dog, and then H changed his whole tact.

Said that everything he’d done, even siccing the dog on me, was a way to get me to hunt. He said he wasn’t H. he was something else in a hunter's body. A man’s body. All I could think of was shooting the shape=shifter outside of the roadhouse with Dean and Carter watching. I killed H, and burned the hotel.  
I’m writing this at a rest stop on I-76 outside Julesburg. I killed H, and I’ll goddamn hunt, all right. I’ll hunt and the kids will hunt, and we will find whatever killed Mary and we will send it to Hell. And on the way, we will kill every monster and ghoul and ghost and demon and anything else. My boys will not grow up to experience what I have. They will not lose what I have lost. 

**November 29:**

We’re gone from Elgin. Where to, I don’t know. Wherever I can learn what happened to Mary, and kill whoever did it. The hunters are out there. One of them must know something about what happened to her. I’ll head to the Roadhouse first. Bill and Ellen will let us stay for a while. After that, who knows?

Never been much for books, but then I never was much for keeping a journal either. Things have changed. I started looking for old books like Fletcher has, like I saw some of the hunters reading at the roadhouse. U need to learn. Know your enemy. And I started digging around libraries. I’m collecting old police files, going through microfiche… looking for any fires, arsons, with similar MOs to our fire. I’m gonna find this thing that killed my wife, and when I do… God forgive me…

**December 11:**

Carter is potty trained. Had to buy her “big girl” underwear. She still won’t let me touch her, unless absolutely necessary. Sammy has finally started sleeping through the night, and now that both Carter and Dean share a large hotel room bed with him, they are both out like a light too. But me… I close my eyes and she’s there. 

It always starts the same, I’m seeing her as she was before that night, beautiful and happy and alive. And I’m not seeing it, I’m living it, it’s like I’m there… it’s so real, I know I can reach out and touch her. And so I do… I reach out… and suddenly I’m back to that night, to the blood and the fire and Mary, Mary is on the ceiling, and how did she get on the ceiling… she can’t be on the ceiling…

Here’s the weird part. When I wake up, sweating and panting… I swear there is something there. I can feel it, hovering over me, over my kids, it’s watching, and it’s waiting. I think it’s even mocking me… you couldn’t stop this. You couldn’t keep her safe. You can’t keep them safe.

**December 14:**

I actually fell asleep last night… then woke up in a cold sweat, five minutes later. Feeling that presence again… and thinking. I’ve been reading about fires, how they start, how quickly they spread… but one of the books talked about strange fires, fires with no explanations… it said that some people believe fire can be controlled by certain evil entities, beings, and used to harm people. It’s crazy, the stuff of fairy tales… like fire breathing dragons, right? But then I remembered… when I went back to Sammy’s room that night, when I tried to get to Mary… the fire leaped out. Leaped out at me… like it had a purpose, like it wanted to keep me away, to stop me from reaching her. Like someone was controlling it.

**December 20:**

I’m beginning to understand that there’s nobody else but me. Other hunters have seen things. A guy named Frank Gutierrez told me with a straight face that Route 666 is thick with Devil dogs. But every hunter’s got a different story, and none of them have seen exactly what I’ve seen.

If I want answers, I’m going to have to find them myself. Been reading about black dogs. Black Shuck.   
Old English scucca = demon. Also known as barghest, as a death omen.

Black dogs haunt roads. Sometimes they have a headless woman with them, or are headless. To see those means you will have a death in the family. Most of the written stories are British, but I’ve been asking around a little. Everybody’s got a black dog story: in Macon County, Tennessee; Meriden, Connecticut; Long Island, Oregon.

December 25:

Didn’t sleep again last night.

Woke up in a cold sweat and realized it was Christmas.

Where’s Mary?

That was my thought all night, and it stayed in my mind all day. Christmas without my wife seems unreal. Our celebration was clumsy… a crooked two-foot-tall plastic tree, a bunch of junk food stuffed in the stockings, and a pile of sports equipment for the boys… football, basketball, soccer ball. Got a baby doll and some dresses for Carter. My attempt to bring back some normalcy. Dean is too big for t-ball, but Carter could start, soon. This year we’ll be going to real Little League Games. Or rather, I’ll be going.

Alone.

Mary will never see Dean hit a home run. 

Never see Carter run the bases. 

She’ll never see Sammy walk, or hear him say his first words. 

She won’t take them to their first day of school, or stay up all night with me worrying the first time they each take the car out. 

She won’t be around to help Carter get ready for prom, or get ready on her wedding day. It’s not right that she’s not here, and that’s all I could think about today. I’m so angry I can barely see straight – I want my wife back.

The police have officially declared our case closed.

What a Christmas gift, huh?

**December 29:**

Carter looks like Mary.

She’s small, but the strawberry blonde and wide eyes are Mary’s.

Sometimes I can’t stand to look at her. Just the thought of looking at her makes me miss Mary even more, and more than once I have thought seriously about leaving her behind. It would make the whole trip easier, then I remember that there is something dark out there, and it wants my family and I still don’t know why…

I miss you, Mary.

We are back at the roadhouse. We’re going to stay here for a while. I can’t just drive around in circles. The babies need a place they can think have as home, even if that doesn’t last. And I need a place where I can learn what hunters do. The only holiday spirit I have is blood lust. I want to kill. The last time I remember feeling like this I was in Vietnam still. But I think we can stay here for a while to get our feet on the ground. 

Or I can get my feet on the ground anyway; I don’t know what it will take for my children to feel normal again. Dean hasn’t been the same since he saw the shape-shifter die, and Carter, she’s not the same since the flames engulfed the house… I don’t know how to talk to them about either event. Dean’s not even five years old. Carter’s on the verge of three. Most kids their ages don’t even have a clear idea what Death is, and they’ve both seen it up close and personal. What do I say to them? How old do they need to be for me to tell them?

 

₦=₦


	3. 1984

**  
1984  
January 1:**

Today a new year begins. Carter turned three. Mary loved this time of year; she loved the idea of a fresh start for everyone. And when Carter was born on January 1 – 1981 she told me it was the start of a new adventure, she was right! Carter was so different from Dean from the word go.

Mary always made a resolution, one a year, and unlike most people, she kept hers. And every year she tried to talk me into making one, but I could never see the point. I wish I could have seen her diary. Maybe it would help me remember her. Maybe it would clue me into some of her secrets. Maybe that’s the point of a diary. Keep your stories, your life, from dying. So that other people don’t forget.

God I wish the kids could have known Mary better.  
Longer.  
This year I’m finally making a resolution. I’m going to find out what happened.

**January 24:**

Dean turns five today. I was thinking about where we’re going to be in the fall, because he should start school. Then I realized that I can’t leave him in school. Anything could happen. Maybe a place that has half-day kindergarten. Maybe that I could do. I know I should. I know he should be able to run around with other kids, who don’t know how to field-strip the Browning. Well, Dean doesn’t either, yet. But he’s learning. He’s got a talent for guns. I can see it already. And he will need it. 

Carter has started talking to me again.  
She called me Daddy and hugged me.  
I didn’t realize how much I missed her, until she kissed my nose.

**May 2:**

Sammy is a year old. We spent his birthday in the mountains, because I had to meet a guy named Daniel Elkins. The hunter culture is weird about how it breaks in new blood. Everyone you meet says you should go meet someone else, and learn something else, and every time you meet someone else they take you out to hunt their favorite kind of monster. This guy – Elkins – lives in a cabin out in the middle of nowhere in Colorado, and according to him, he’s the greatest vampire hunter alive.

Vampires.

They’re real. I’ve never seen one, but Daniel says they’re real. So I just believe him, best to do that with hunters I’ve learned. He also says that the hunter’s journal is for research as much as it is for recording day to day whatever. Sorry for not recording for a while the kids have been coloring the pages.  
Regardless, I copied the following for a book called Harleian Miscellany:

Vampires, 400 years ago, there are other records, even older.  
Peter Plogojewitz, the Shoemaker of Silesia

**May 17:**

This would have been our sixth wedding anniversary. Six is iron. Sammy took his first steps yesterday... he walked towards Dean, then from Dean to Carter. The pair looked so proud of themselves. He then fell flat on his face and started crying; Carter had him up and calmed down in a flash. Life is tough, kid. Do I sound like a proud dad? I am.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for a year. 

I’m never going to be over it, and I wouldn’t want to be. But I’ve spent the last year getting better at revenge.

**Maybe this is a good time to write down everything I’ve learned about Lawrence.**

Corner of 8th and Massachusetts: Ghost, woman in nineteenth-century dress.

7th and Massachusetts Eldridge Hotel. Word is the city’s going to rebuild it, so maybe the haunting will change – but Missouri says there’s something about the fifth floor. She gets visions more easily there, like the spirit world is closer somehow.

Stull Church abandoned since 1922. No roof, but you can stand inside in a thunderstorm and not get wet. Rain will not fall on it. A crucifix still hangs on the wall, and it turns upside down when you approach.

Stull Cemetery – Devil said to appear there twice a year, on the vernal equinox and Halloween. He is visiting the grave of his children, born of a human witch and dead after a few days.

Haskell Institute: children’s cemetery near Taminerd Hall, full of uneasy ghost. Another ghost, a coed suicide, haunts the basement of Pocahontas Hall. Hiawatha Hall full of bad echoes, the sorrow of pain of generations of abused children. How many of them died?

I’m learning about haunting. Everyone I’ve talked to and read thinks they know everything, but they all say something different. Or so vague that it doesn’t mean anything. I read this and that, and tell myself that if I keep doing it, I’ll start to see patterns.

_In the world of spirits is always a great number of them, as being the first sort of all, in order to their examination and preparation; but there is no fixed time for their stay; for some are translated to heaven and others confined to hell soon after their arrival; whilst some continue there for weeks, and others for several years… Ebenezer Sibly_

This reminded me of Doc Benton. From William of Newburgh:

_As soon as this man was left alone in this place, the devil, imagining that he had found the right moment for breaking his courage, incontinent roused up his own chosen vessel, who appeared to have reposed longer than usual. Having beheld this form afar, he grew stiff with terror by reason of his being alone; but soon recovering his courage, and no place of refuge being at hand, he valiantly withstood the onset of the fiend, who came rushing upon him with a terrible noise, and he struck the axe which he wielded in his hand deep into his body. On receiving this wound, the monster groaned aloud, and turning his back, fled with a rapidity not at all inferior to that with which he advanced, while the man urged his flying foe from behind, and compelled him to seek his own tomb again; which opening of its own accord, and received its guest from the advance of the pursuer, immediately appeared to close again with the same facility. In the meantime, they who, impatient of the coldness of the night, had retreated to the fire ran up, through somewhat too late, and having heard what had happened, rendered needful assistance in digging up and removing from the midst of the tomb the accursed corpse at the earliest dawn. When they had divested it of the clay cast forth with it, they found he huge wound it had received, and a great quality of gore which had flowed from it in the sepulcher; and so having carried it away beyond the walls of the monastery and burnt it, they scattered the ashes to the winds._

Everyone agrees that you have to burn them to make sure they stay dead. Should have burned Doc Benton, too, but I’m guessing the chainsaw did the trick. 

 

₦=₦


	4. 1985

**  
1985  
January 1:**

Carter is four. She talks non-stop now. And ask so many questions. She’s not afraid of anything, either. In the car this morning, she demanded I tell her about mommy and why we left mommy in the fire.

I had to stop driving and cry.

She sings like you Mary, god, she’s going to kill me.

New Year’s Day, Mary. I promised last year that I would avenge you. I promise again. I’ll promise it every year until it happens. I’ll never forget.

**January 24:**

Dean’s sixth birthday. Carter made him a rather impressive hat of paper. It’s been more than a year since they saw me kill a shape-shifter. He doesn’t ask about it anymore. And he stopped asking about school. I tried to do it last fall, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t risk it. Maybe this year, now that he’s a little older, now that he knows a little more about things. I’ve been teaching him. Not the worst stuff, but enough so he knows that there are things that go bump in the night.

**May 2:**

Sammy is two today. Two years in a row we’ve spent his birthday in Colorado, where I had to stop by Daniel’s. Still never seen a vampire, but Elkins is such a hermit that because I talk to him other hunters are starting to ask me to pick his brain for them.

Carter reads to Sammy. I think Dean taught her. I am reminded that you taught Dean. And that breaks my heart. Sam is going to learn everything there is to learn about life from them.  
Crosses won’t repel them, and sunlight won’t kill them. They can go outside. They need blood to survive, and prefer no humans around. The only way to be sure of killing them is beheading – although the blood of a dead man is like poison to them. It won’t kill them, but it weakens them, makes them slow and sick.

Daniel says they’re extinct but he keeps an eye out anyway, and he thinks I should know enough about them to take one of if there were any left. He gave me a copy of the article, in case it was ever useful.

**May 17:**

This would have been our seventh anniversary. Wool and Copper.

**September 7:**

Today Dean and Carter started school. I put Dean straight into first grade, he’s almost seven, and I just told the school that he’d been in kindergarten back in Kansas. I put Carter into Kindergarten, she’s close to five, and I lied to the school about her too, stating she’d been in preschool in Kansas, too. They didn’t press too hard when I told them that the kids had lost their mother, and we’d been moving around. I think we’ll stay here for a while. Or try, anyway. I felt normal again while I was taking them to school. 

He asked on the way in whether kids in school learned the same stuff he had been learning. Carter leaned in real close to listen to the answer. My kids know they are different. I had to tell them that maybe it was a good idea for them to talk about dad’s job on the playground.

They came home on top of the world. Dean brought me worksheets with the names of different parts of a fish, different numbers of apples and oranges added together…

Carter brought home flashcards with letters and numbers, and several worksheets with her name on them, she’s supposed to practice writing, she rights better than Dean, though. 

Something I believe Dean has been teaching her.

This is what it should be like, why can’t it?

Sammy wants to be in school too. I can’t even imagine staying here long enough for him to start school here. Three years seems like forever.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for two years.

I’ve been on the road for three days, cleaning up a haunted building in San Francisco. Already these are starting to seem like an everyday chore to me. You get the story, you find the remains, and you burn them and salt them. End of story. There were two girls, and the whole ride back to the roadhouse I was thinking that I’ll never have a second daughter for Carter to giggle with. 

Jo works out, alright, I guess.

Dean saw something on my face, or maybe he knew what day it was.

When I got here, he came up to me, and ask if I’d had a tough hunt, and I couldn’t talk for a minute, then Carter was on me, wound around my legs, nestled into me.

**November 14:**

Took Dean shooting. If he’s big enough to try to comfort me, he’s big enough to start learning the tools of the trade. Even brought Carter along. I only let them fire the .22, but damn if they are not better shots then I ever was. My drill sergeant would have taken them over me anyway, times like this I am beyond proud of them, I have a feeling it will be different with Sammy. 

Maybe he’s just too young to show it, but I don’t think he’s got the same kind of killer instinct as my older two.

Pliny the Younger, Letter to Sura:

_There was at Athens a large and roomy house, which had a bad name, so that no one could live there. In the dead of the night a noise, resembling the clashing of iron, was frequently heard, which, if you listened more attentively, sounded like the rattling of chains, distant at first, but approaching nearer by degrees: immediately afterward a specter appeared in the form of an old man, of extremely emaciated and squalid appearance with a long beard and disheveled hair, rattling the chains on his feet and hands. The distressed occupants meanwhile passed their wakeful nights under the most dreadful terrors imaginable. This, as it broke their rest, ruined their health, and brought on distempers, their terror grew upon them, and death ensued. Even in the daytime, though the spirit did not appear, yet the impression remained so strong upon their imaginations that it still seemed before their eyes, and kept them in perpetual alarm. Consequently the house was at length deserted, as being deemed absolutely uninhabitable; so that it was now entirely abandoned to the ghost. However, in hopes that some tenant might be found who was ignorant of this very alarming circumstance, a bill was put up, giving notice that it was either to be let or sold. It happened that Athenodorus the philosopher came to Athens at this time, and, reading the bill, enquired the price. The extraordinary cheapness raised his suspicions; nevertheless, when he heard the whole story, he was so far from being discouraged that he was more strongly inclined to hire it, and, in short, actually did so. When it grew toward evening, he ordered a couch and prepared for him in the front part of the house, and after calling for a light, together with his pencil and tablets, directed all his people to retire. But that his mind might not, for want of employment, be open to the vain terrors of imaginary noises and spirits, he applied himself to writing with the utmost attention. The first part of the night passed in entire silence, as usual; at length a clanking or iron and rattling of chains was heard: however, he neither lifted up his eyes nor laid down his pen, but in order to keep calm and collected tried to pass the sounds off to himself as something else. The noise increased and advanced nearer, till it seemed at the door, and at last in the chamber. He looked up, saw, and recognized the ghost exactly as it had been described to him: it stood before him, beckoning with a finger, like a person who calls another. Athenodorus in replay made a sign with his hand that it should wait a little, and threw his eyes again upon his papers; the ghost then rattled its chains over the head of the philosopher, who looked upon this, and seeing it beckoning as before, immediately arose, and, light in hand, followed it. The ghost slowly stalked along, as if encumbered with its chains, and, turning into the area of the house, suddenly vanished.. Athenodorus, being thus deserted, made a mark with some grass and leaves on the spot where the spirit left him. The next day he gave the information to the magistrates, and advised them to order that spot be dug up. This was accordingly done, and the skeleton of a man in chains was found there for the body, having lain a considerable time in the ground, was petrified and moldered away from the fetters. The bones being collected together were publically buried, and thus after the ghost was appeased by the proper ceremonies, the house was haunted no more._

 

₦=₦


	5. 1986

**  
1986  
January 1:**

Carter is five today. God, when she sings she sounds like you. We were in the car, driving along some stretch of forgotten highway when some Elvis song came on, and when she opened her mouth, the beautiful song that came out, dear god. It was you; Carter is so much like you. It breaks my heart; God cursed me with her, a constant reminder that I don’t have you.

Happy New Year.

This year I will discover what killed you.

**January 24:**

For his seventh birthday, I took Dean shooting again. He wanted to fire on of the big guns – that’s what he called them. I let him shoot the Browning, but I steadied his hands. Sammy and Carter made him a card. It was like a normal day, like we were a normal family with a mom who was off shopping or at work or something. Instead of dead. That illusion never last. I can’t afford to let it.

_“The wicked Utukku who slays man alive on the plain.  
The wicked Alu who covers (man) like a garment.  
The wicked Etimmu, the wicked Gallu, who bind the body.  
The Lamme (Lamashtu), and Lammae (Labasu) who cause disease in the body.  
The Lilu who wanders in the plain.  
They have come nigh unto a suffering man on the outside.  
They have brought about a painful malady in his body.  
The curse of evil has come into his body.  
An eveil goblin they have placed in his body.  
An evil bane has come into his body.  
Evil poison they have placed in his body.  
An evil malediction has come into his parts.  
Evil and trouble they have placed in his body.  
Poison an taint have come into his body.  
They have produced evil.  
Evil being, evil face, evil mouth, evil tounge.  
Sorcery, venom, slaver, wicked machinations,   
Which are produced in the body of the sick man.  
O woe for the sick man whom they cause to moan like a sqharrat-pot”_

**January 29:**  
 ** _RIP_**  
Jarvis  
Resnik  
Smith  
Onizuka  
McAuliffe  
McNair  
Scobee

**April 16:**

There is a reason why they call it Devil’s Gate.

We were supposed to turn Devil’s Gate into Devil’s trap.

But I made a mistake, and Bill died.

It’s a slot canyon, used to flood all the time (Arroyo Seco isn’t always seco) until they put in a spillway and built the reservoir. But odd things happened there. Four kids in three years, from 1957-1960, vanished without a trace. Other people see things. No one will talk about it. Bill was sure that something had come up through the canyon thirty years ago, and was about to again. Some kind of hell spawn. So we went there to catch it in the act and take care of it.

Hell spawn, that’s the word he used. I don’t know if I believe in Hell. But I do remember the Black Shuck, and the way Mary’s spirit was transformed in Blue Earth. That came from somewhere. Was it a demon? I don’t know if I believe in demons. I’ve seen people who thought they were demons, and acted like demons – but how would you know the difference between a demon and a shape-shifter? How would you know?

I’m avoiding it.

This is how Bill died.

At the mouth of the spillway we found this god-awful fluid trickling straight out of the concrete. Dark brown, stinking of sulfur. It burned your fingers to touch it. Bill drew a figure around it; he called it a Devil’s trap from a book called the Key of Solomon. Psalm 90:13. He used charcoal to draw the trap on the wall of the spillway around the sulfur, and then I laid it out on the ground in front of the tunnel, using salt. Kosher salt, no added iodides. Bill said this was important.

He started watching the sky as the sun set. The first stars would tell him when the hell spawn was coming through, he said. I looked up with him, but the stars looked like stars to me. I have so much to learn. There I was in Pasadena, the kids at the roadhouse. I wasn’t being a father. I was being a hunter. I was hunting and while I looked up at the sky I made a mistake.

A simple mistake.

I didn’t pay attention to where my feet were, and I scuffed the salt. Just a little. But enough that when something came out the mouth of the tunnel, nothing stopped it. It looked like smoke. 

And sounded like a million flies. Bill looked down from eh stars just in time for it to flow right into him. 

He started jerking like a condemned man in the electric chair and two voices were coming out of his mouth. One was the thing, the Hell spawn, the other his. I don’t know what language it was speaking, but its voice was horrible. It was the sound that cancer would make if it spoke. And Bill, he kept saying over and over again:

**John, shoot me, shoot me, John**

So I did.

It was the worst mistake I ever made.

It was careless and stupid.

It got a good man killed.

A husband and father, and a damned good hunter, and I don’t know how I’m going to explain this to Ellen. And Jo, poor Jo. Carter is going to be so mad at me for making Jo sad. Jo’s just turned four. How am I going to tell her?

I can’t let Ellen do it on her own. I’m responsible. It was over in less than a minute, Bill Harvelle dead and me standing there with a gun in my hand listening to the echo of the gunshots in the hill and the echo of that awful Hell spawn voice in my head. And in the end Bill was still teaching me. With his body dying and something inside of me, he staggered over to the sulfur stinking wall and let the black smoke back out –straight into the devil’s trap on the wall. Then he took a step back, careful not to do what I did, and he sat down and died leaning against the spillway wall under the Devil’s trap he’d drawn. He saved my life even though it took his. It was a hunter’s death.

I copied the Devils Trap, but I didn’t need to. I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to.

**May 2:**

Sammy is three today. We are in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. We celebrated with an ice-cream cake. He was still wearing most of it when he fell asleep. Dean’s sleeping well too. Carter has had a couple of nightmares lately. But all three of them are tucked in and fast asleep now. The room only has one bed. I’ll sleep on the floor, if I sleep at all. Some nights it’s enough to watch them sleep, and know that if they start to have a nightmare I’ll be right there to stop it.

**May 17:**

This would have been our eight anniversaries.

Eight is bronze.

Dean, Carter, and Sammy were playing ring around the rosie outside the hotel room today. The three of them giggling and laughing. Sam fell, and skidded his knees. Scraped them up real bad, too. 

Carter, in all her five year old glory scooped him up, Dean next to her, seven and wide eyed. They bandaged him up. I believe Dean stole a first aid kit. Sometimes I wonder if I should correct them, when they take without asking.

They are asleep now. 

I don’t know when Dean and Carter became Sam’s mother and father, but they have. And that breaks my heart, more than I care to admit.

**September 5:**

Dean started second grade.

Carter started first.

I watch them like a hawk.

They make me swear to take care of Sammy before they leave for school. Dean makes me promise to feed him, and Carter has written out his feeding and napping schedule. I have my days with Sammy while those two are learning whatever school teaches kids these days. Sammy is a very different kid. Carter and Dean excel at every weapon they try, every skill I try to teach them. Sammy, though, he hasn’t taken to the idea of hunting bad guys, and he’s still too young to really understand what it means to avenge his mother, to him, her death just means she’s not here, and he doesn’t remember her. For him, Mary… mother, is a word. A mother, to him, is something he never had. But he still supposed to be sad that she died.

I don’t think he understands.

Carter and Dean don’t mind it, just telling him he’ll understand one day.

How can he, really?

**September 19:**

I dreamed last night, about you at first Mary. Then it was Carter on the ceiling, Carter withering in pain and dying. I realized in that moment that there is no way I can leave her behind. She is both a blessing and a curse Mary. She is you made over, God had the thought of mine to leave me a very significant piece of you.

**October 30:**

Sammy wants to dress up for Halloween. Dean and Carter both know not to ask to dress up anymore. I squished Sammy’s dreams tonight and told him, no. No trick or treating, no going out for them until November 1.

In other news, I saw an exorcism today. Or something that looked like an exorcism. According to Jim, there really are demons. I don’t know if I believe that – he’s a pastor, so of course he does, but… demons? From Hell? Even after the things I’ve seen these three past years (almost), I can’t quite make demons fit. 

But between watching what happened today and what happened to Bill at Devils Gate… I don’t know anymore.

Jim knows I have the journal. After he was done and the girl was looking around like someone who’d just woken up from the worst nightmare you can imagine, he took me back to his church and had me copy down a shorter version of the Ritual Romanum exorcism ritual. Usually, he said, you don’t have to read the whole thing. Most demons can’t hold on out that long. 

But he wants me to copy the whole thing just in case. So I’m going to. I don’t know if I believe in demons, but I’m not sure I can disbelieve them anymore either.

In the expulsion of demonic forces or energies residing in an individual, soul possession, command of one’s motor and abilities.

The Ritual Romanum was widely used in the mid- to late-13th centuries in most of Eastern Europe. Until the church banned its use in the beginning of the 14th. Initially studies indicate that this anti-curse was particularly helpful in ridding the individual of unwanted guest. The first part if the ritual expels the entity from the host, the second half of the ritual banishes the spirit back from whence it came. Repeat the incantation as follows:

 

Regna Terrae, cantata deo,  
psallite domino,  
qui vehitur per calus  
caelos antiques!

Ecce, edit vocem sua, vocem, potentem:  
Akinoscite potentiam dei!  
Majestas ejus,  
Et potential ejus  
In nubibus.  
Timendus est dues e sancto suo,  
dues Israel; ipse potentiam  
datet robur populo suo  
benedictus dues

*Gloria Patri

 

On the completion of the first part of the incantation the demon may take one or more of several forms ranging from liquid to gaseous to corporeal to any combination of the aforementioned. Great care must be taken in performing the second part of the ritual. The demon upon expulsion can become very powerful without the need of a vessel. Beware that the spirit can enter a host through any opening in the host, keep your eyes open and mouth shut.

In Michigan, they call October 30 Devil’s Night.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead three years. She doesn’t know that Sammy knows the alphabet, how to write his name, and likes bugs. She doesn’t know that Carter is reading at a fifth grade level in the first grade, that Carter sings like an angel, that she is the prettiest girl in her class. She doesn’t know that Dean hit five home runs in the last eight games, that he’s excellent in math, and that he watches both his younger siblings like a hawk watches her young. The expression he wears while watching over Carter and Sammy lets me know he would die for his siblings. Carter’s expression is much the same when it comes to Sam. I catch the pair of them holding Sammy’s hands, his little form tucked between them, whenever we go for a walk. They don’t hold my hand anymore.

She doesn’t know how it tears me up inside to see the expression they wear, or know that they would both put themselves between a bullet and Sammy. It kills me further to know it is my fault for drilling it into my older two, that he is their responsibility. Dean is eight years old and his brother and sister’s lives rest in his hands, at least with Sammy he has six year old Carter’s help. I didn’t have the right to ask them to raise Sam, to protect Sam. But what else could I do?

 

₦=₦


	6. 1987

**  
1987  
January 1:**

Happy Sixth birthday to Carter. Today she asked that I take the day off to play with her and her brothers. I couldn’t though. I had to do research. It snowed. The three of them were off to play with the snow when I started copying the complete ritual. I could see them through the hotel window. The care Dean and Carter took bundling up little Sammy made my heart ache. I am still so openly and honestly pissed off that Mary is no longer here. I wanted more kids, another daughter. Maybe another son. I wanted a houseful, so did Mary.

Another New Year, another promise. I will find it, Mary. And kill it. 

Tracked down the complete Ritual Romanum, the version the exorcist like to use when they have plenty of time. Hope I’ll never ever need it.

**January 24:**

Dean turns eight today. Second grade is treating him well. I hope we can stay. He’s at school, and they are going to have a little party for him. Carter helped me bake cupcakes to take to school with him. Then when he gets home, we’re going to do the family thing. We’re going to Chuck E. Cheese’s, and we’ll eat pizza and play video-games until the kids go NUTS.

**March 15:**

Carter, she’s six. I mentioned that.

She told me today she **hated** me.

Red in the face angry, little fist balled up.

The reason?

I spanked Dean and Sam. Dean let Sammy eat too much chocolate while I was out and he would not eat his dinner. I’d already had too much to drink and I knew it. However, she grabbed me by my shirt front, clenching my fist, and shaking me hard. She shouted “I hate you! You never even say I love you to us anymore!”

I couldn’t help but cringe, I simply wanted to get away from her, and I shoved her down, away from me, and left. Dean must have locked the door after me, because when I came back this morning I had to convince the hotel lobby lady to give me another key.

**May 2:**

Sammy is four today. And sure enough were in Colorado. That’s three out of four of his birthdays we’ve been visiting Daniel. The mountains are a good place to spend early May. Maybe we should make a tradition of it – but I have a feeling that were not in any place to start traditions. Had to pull Dean and Carter out of school when I got a note from Ellen hat someone passing through the Roadhouse had exorcised a demon who knew exactly where we were.

Carter sobbed, her head in Dean’s lap. She had to leave behind her friends, and a librarian who had helped her start reading Nancy Drew and The Hardy Boys. Dean just ran his fingers through his sister’s golden locks and whispered everything would be ok. Sammy is asleep next to Carter, stretched out in the seat. The blanket you made them stretched over them. I hadn’t realized until recently that both Dean and Carter take special care of that damn thing.

I think hunters call something a demon when they don’t know what else it could be. The word is easy to throw around. But whatever it was, if the Winchester’s were on its mind, it’s the enemy. So we’re moving for two reasons. One, the enemy knows where we are. Two, I’m going to go after him where he is… as soon as I figure that out. So we’re in Colorado, on our way to Texas. Dean understands.

Sammy gets Daniel’s books down from the shelves and pretends to read them. Carter reads them out to him, when it’s something she can articulate. He can pick out some words, but what he’s really after is the pictures. Like any kid his age. We stopped by here because I took out a strange kind of revenant in April, one I’ve never seen before. It was in Greektown, Detroit. Daniel figured it out right away.

_VRYKOLAKAS: Unconsecrated burial returns to either murder people in the grave yard or cause problems in the house it left. Sometimes it appears human, other times as a werewolf sort of creature. Can drain the life force of the sleeper, similar to succubi/incubi or mara. Stories vary widely, often incorporating elements of the poltergeist, sometimes the vrykolakas attacks and kill people; other times it plagues their sleep, other times only children die, other times it is only want to be dispatched by its surviving family members fulfillment of a promise. Much overlap between Vrykolakas lore and that of vampires. Not sure if one is a subspecies of the other, or if confusion in the lore has obscured the real differences._

_Some of the journal got destroyed, sorry Dad. So Carter and I are rewriting the information from memory. Wish us luck._

_VETALA: Hostile spirits from Indian Lore, will animate corpses – their own or others – to move around. Haunt cemeteries’ and creation grounds. Will attack in cemeteries, can also drive people mad. Will kill children, possibly to eat? And are known to induce miscarriages. Trapped between the material world and the afterlife, can be dispelled by the performance of funeral rites. NOTE: Exorcism will not work on a vetala. They aren’t demons in the sense of the Judeo-Christian ritual. If caught in the right mood, a vetala will tell you the past and future, for this reason they’re much sought after by sorcerers… mostly resulting in fatal mishaps for those sorcerers, since if caught in the wrong mood, a vetala is lethal before you know its there. Best idea is to get on with the funeral rites and send them on their way._

**May 17:**

This would have been our ninth anniversary.

Pottery.

How is six years iron and nine pottery? I wonder if we would have had more children. Mary talked about a second daughter. I would have liked that, a matching set. Carter is so… full of life, I wonder if a second daughter would be like Sammy, different from Dean and Carter. 

Its summer, we’re on the move. Already I’m trying to figure out what to do about school in the fall. I am starting to figure out that you can move a kid from school to school every month, and the schools deal with it because they have to. A part of me wonders how the kids deal with it.

But my kids have to be solders. And Soldiers adapt. 

**July 13:**

From the mouths of babes… by oldest son and daughter are so… brilliant.

We were in Portland, Maine, because I’d heard of a Miqmaq shaman named David Fowler who lived there. I told him some of my story, and he agreed to raise a Manitou and let me ask it some questions. We went down into the basement of his house and started getting the divination ready. I’m the only white man who’s ever seen it, he said, and he was only doing it for me as a favor to the hunters he knew. He burned some sacred tobacco, and some other herbs I didn’t recognize. The room got smokier than it seems like it should have. The Manitou appeared, and I got right to the point. I asked it who or what killed Mary. Then things went wrong. 

I still don’t know whether Fowler made a mistake, or whether a different spirit rode up into our world along with the Manitou. But whatever happened, it turned into something physical and real. Like a bear, kind of. And before I could stop it, it killed Fowler. It almost killed me too, but I fought it. I don’t know if I would have won, because the spirit let go of its form, animated Fowler’s body and went out through the basement window. I got the hell outta dodge, picked the babies up – guess they are not babies anymore.. we were almost to the New Hampshire line when Carter and Dean stopped whispering to one another. 

“Uhm, Daddy.” Carter started, I looked in the rearview at the pair of them. Sam fast asleep between them.

Then Dean asked me one of the killer questions that little kids come up with, “Dad”, he says, “Won’t the Manitou go after other people now?”

That’s a hard thing to face. Not that he asked the question, or that he was right, but that he had a better sense of right and wrong, and that his sister agreed with him. We were back at Fowler’s house an hour later, and that night I tracked down and killed him. He was prowling around the edges of the Cub Scout camp out in a place called Bradbury Mountain. God knows what would have happened if my two Hunters In Training hadn’t spoken to each other about it, then me.

I came this close to completely going off the rails. I almost let this quest overwhelm what I know is right, and a bunch of kids almost died because of it. A hunter never passes up a hunt, and a hunter never bails on a hunt. That will never happen again. Never. I will not fail Mary’s memory, and I will not fail my kids.

 

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for four years. Dean asked me today about what she looked like. He never talks about her on any other day but this one.

I couldn’t even show him a picture, so I told him that Mary looked a lot like Carter, but grown up. That he would always be able to look at his mother, because his sister was going to be her spitting image. That is mother was the most beautiful woman in the room, everyday. I told him that she was kind, and loved the three of them very much. I didn’t mention how much we fought, how much I hated her sometimes. I didn’t mention that I had just moved back in when everything went to flames.

 

₦=₦


	7. 1988

**  
1988  
January 1:**

Carter is seven today. She’s getting tall for her age, but thin like a bean pole. We are near Cleveland, Ohio. Preparing to start a new school again.

**January 24:**

Dean is nine today. Carter made him a birthday cake. He might not finish third grade, and Carter might not finish second. Dean calls himself the New Kid all the time. Carter is starting to not talk again, there are long times that she goes without talking. They’ve been in three schools, already this year. Who knows how many more?

**May 2:**

Sammy is five today. Thank God. He almost didn’t make it.

I could blame Dean.

I could blame Carter.

But it’s my fault. 

There’s enough blame to go around. I missed the kill, and I left Dean watching over Carter and Sammy to go after it. Dean couldn’t pull the trigger when he needed too, and I almost lost both Carter and Sam. I haven’t taught them well enough. If Dean is weak like that again, they will die… but what kind of father am I to put a nine-year-old boy in a situation where he might have to kill to protect his sister and brother?

Then there is Carter, who knows her job is to teach Sammy, and keep him alive.

I’m the kind of father I have to be. I’m the kind of father who teaches his boys that no man or monster can kill their mother and get away with it. I’m the kind of father who shows them when it comes to family, you go to the ends of the earth to put things right.

We’re in Wisconsin, so we might as well skip over to Blue Earth and visit with Jim. He’ll want to know about this, and maybe it’ll do me good to talk to him.

_[continue from ripped page] creatures to feed on spirits vitae (qi). Possible that they are restricted to road ways, but I am working from a story Bobby Singer told me, never laid eyes on one myself._

**May 17:**

Our tenth anniversary has come and gone. 

Carter and Dean are doing well.

Sammy has nightmares.

Tin.

**September 28:**

Séance

On a clean altar cloth, place a small bowl filled with fresh herbs. Around the perimeter of the cloth, place black and white candles, alternating and equal in numbers. When all the candles are lit recite the following:

Amate spiritus obscure, te quaerimus.  
Te oramus, nobiscum colloquere, apud nos circita.

At the finish of the incantation, pinch a tiny amount of frankincense, sandalwood, OR cinnamon powder over one of the flames.  
Pythagoras also lead séances in approximately 540 BC, using something like a ouiji board. Using a wheeled table that moved towards signs set up in a rough circle. 

Katabasis: the voyage to the underworld – Orpheus looking for Eurydice. Adapted to Greek necromancy. A spirit projection of the necromancer would travel to the underworld to speak with the dead.

Katadesmoi: a Greek curse inscribed on a led tablet – usually. A spirit is summoned and bound to the table to make sure the curse is affective. Term also used for the summoning and binding of a spirit to a task, Katadesmoi buried in a cemetery or sacred place to make them more affective.

_Necromantic conjuration from Reginal Scot, Dicoverie of Witchraft. Seals of the Earth necessary to bring the spirit.  
Sibly, necromantic conjuration. At the tomb or grave, after inscribing the protective circle: “By the virtue of the holy resurrection, and the torments of the damned, I conjure and exorcise thee, spirit of N. deceased, to answer my liege demands, being obedient unto these sacred ceremonies, on pain of everlasting torment and distress. Arise, arise, arise, change and command thee.”_

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for five years.

We were only married for five.

Sometimes I feel like I am serving a prison sentence.

My three children are corporal punishment, but also a reminder to continue.

**December 5:**

Dean’s teacher called me to tell me he has a subscription to “Weekly World News”, and had it delivered to the school. Apparently it has both Dean and Carter’s names on it. How are they paying for it? No damn clue. If I were to ask either one, they are sharp enough to lie to me. 

Whatever their secret is, they can keep it. In honesty I am really proud of them, for seeing something they wanted and doing their best to achieve it. 

**December 27:**

A variation, supposed to allow one to talk to angels. I don’t believe in those anymore than I believe in demons.

₦=₦


	8. 1989

**  
**1989  
January 1: 

Carter is eight today, preconscious little brat. She, Dean, and Sam snuck off to the park. Without telling me. We will be on the move again soon, I can feel it.

**January 24:**

Dean turns ten today.

Reagan is out of office.

A crazy hunter told me a couple years ago that Reagan was an avatar of the antichrist because each of his names has six letters: Ronald Wilson Reagan. Reagan also lived at 666 Saint Cloud Road.

_Adam here, adding a part that was destroyed, Damn Murphy:_

____

_Possible that original number of the Beast was 616. This is attested to in Codex Ephraimi Rexscriptus. St. Jerome said 616 instead of 666._  
666 a triangular number (1+2+3+4+5 = 36), better symmetry than 616.  
616: Area code of western Michigan – Kalamazoo, Grand Rapids. Traverse City.  
Fear of the number 666: hexakoshioihexekontahexaphobia.  
Gematria: Hebrew neurometry, values later transposed to other alphabets. According to gematria, commentators on Revelations give possible names of the antichrist:  
Lampetis = the lustrous one  
Teitan = ?  
Palaibaskanos = ancient sorcerer  
Benediktos = blue eyed bastard  
Kakos Odegos = Wicked guide  
Alethes Blaberos = harmful  
Ammos Adikos = unjust lamb  
O Niketes = the conquerer  
Antemos = opponent  
Diclux = double dealer (same as Teitan, only latin)  
Genseriko = Gendrvic, vandal who sacked Rome?  
Aranodymy = one deny  
Acxyme = ? 

**May 2:**

Sammy is six years old today. He’ll start kindergarten in the fall. Wherever we are. He is so different from Dean and Carter. Quiet, watchful. He’s learned that there are things to fear in the world but where Dean want to kill them, and Carter wants to fight them, you get the sense that Sammy watches, learns. He’s figuring something out. But when Sammy does ask questions, they are good!

**May 17:**

Eleven years.

Steel.

The kids are the only thing that keeps me going.

**July 4:**

This is how you spend your holiday weekend as a hunter. I got the kids into a camp. Not far from Blue Earth. I wanted them to be regular kids for a while, and I needed to consult with Pastor Jim about a few things. 

Should have known that not even a summer camp could have been normal for them. On the fifth day of camp, Dean was canoeing through an easy rapid on the Blue Earth River. Things went bad. Dean swore to me when he came back that he’d seen something – only he said “someone” – capsize the canoe. I didn’t think about it too much… until the next week, when another canoe when over and the counselor paddling it died. I spent a couple of days looking into it, and ran across a Cree legend about humanoid tricksters called mannegishi. They live in river rapids and like to tip canoes, but they usually don’t get malevolent unless the locals do something to make them angry. So what was it?

Turns out the camp is expanding, and part of the work involved in blasting some riverside rock formations that used to have pictographs showing the Cree’s reverence for the little bastards. 

The mannegishi didn’t like having those gone, and started to take it out on the campers.

I’d have killed every one of them for coming after Dean. But the truth is they had the right to be mad. So I kept my head and got Jim to put me in touch with a Cree medicine man that lived over in south Dakota. I completing about the distance and Jim told me to shut up and be happy. I didn’t have to go to Montana or Saskatchewan, where most of the Cree live now. 

The medicine man called himself Joey Tall Pine, which I figure is a moniker he took on for the tourist, but after the last six years, I’m the last guy in the world who gets to complain about someone using and alias. I gave him a ride to Blue Earth, and we went down to the rapids that night (now two days ago).

He talked things over with them, and they struck a bargain. The little spirits would stop going after kids at the camp if Joey redid some of the pictographs somewhere and guaranteed they would not be destroyed. 

Jim stepped in and said, hey, I don’t have nearly enough aquatic tricksters in the creek behind my house. Presto! Mannegishi in Jim’s creek – and Joey Tall Pine got to exercise his pictographic talent. 

Part of me still wants to kill them, because of what happened to Dean. But when I take a minute to cool off I realize it really is the camps fault. Some day camp, wrecking pictographs so they can expand their boat launch. The boys are going someplace else next week, for as long as we can stay. Carter asked to stay with me, hunt with me.

I pitched a tent in Jim’s back yard, and the boys are fast asleep in it, now. I’ve met a girl, her name is Amelia. I’m drunk enough to visit her.

**August 18:**

Amelia is sweet. Deaf. Not afraid of the dark.

I’m not in love with her, god I miss you Mary.

But I am lonely.

All the water spirits I’ve read up on:

Vodyanoy : Russian male water spirit, sometimes said to be a shape-shifter but more often appears as an old man, skin freckled with scales, a green beard tangled with much and underwater plants. May live in whirlpools. In larger bodies of water, often lives in sunken ships, served by the drowned ghost of ships’ crews. Drowns people to serve him as slaves, but also protects fishermen who appease him by giving him the first fish of their catch. Likes butter and tobacco.

Also likes rusalka, and often either marries one or takes several as servants or concubines. Rusalki are spirits of women who are murdered or die by suicide in water – sometimes children who were drowned by their mothers. (See women in white.) The adult versions sing to seduce passerby or sailors, then draw them underwater to become their spirit lovers. Lore sometimes suggests vampiric qualities. Some rusalki will vanish if their deaths are avenged. Can also be dispelled if kept out of water long enough for their hair to dry. The child versions can be dispelled by baptism with holy water.

Have heard of vodyanoy from hunters in Alaska. Never seen one. Shoshone legends from Wyoming tell of water Ghost Woman, who beguiles hunters and travels with sexual attraction, also shoots them with spirit arrows.

The Germanic Nix combines attributes of both. In human form, the Nix is usually male and handsome, and dangerous to unmarried women and unbaptized children. Most active at summer and winter solstice (Christianized versions of the legend say Christmas Eve). Plays music to beguile its target. Also an omen of drowning – similar to banshee – can be heard screaming from the water, signaling that someone is going to drown there. Like vodyanoy, the Nix likes tobacco, and also vodka. Can be made to appear by dripping blood into water, or by sacrificing a black animal.

Once, in Pinckney, Michigan, I suckered a Nix by using a Black Shuck as the sacrifice. That was a show, a demon dog tangling with a water spirit. The Shuck won, and I sent it back to Hell for its trouble.

Sometimes the Nix appears as a horse called Backahasten, which if ridden, will leap into the nearest body of water, drowning the rider. Overlap here with Celtic/Scottish stories of the Kelpie and Each Uisge. Kelpies appear from the fog near rivers, and, if ridden, drown their riders. The each uisge can be ridden safely as long as it can’t see or smell water. The minute it does, it drags the rider in and devours him, leaving only the liver.

This last detail I thought was just storyteller’s elaboration until I tangled with an each uisge at the Quabbin Reservoir in Massachusetts. That one took human form, too, and looked like a handsome young man who always had weeds in his hair. I was lucky to get out with my liver.

I used to like swimming, but that’s one more thing I lost to the job. Water spirits don’t need much water, either. See British legends of Jenny Grennteeth or Peg-O-The-Well. Eygptian El Nadaha (“the caller”) lures children into canals to drown them.

Also have heard from other hunters about a haunted old racetrack in Goshen, NY. A horse and rider who drowned right after the turn of the century come back and ride across the lake, sometimes chasing or threatening people in the area. Backahasten, sounds like? But I haven’t seen anywhere else that a human could be transformed into one…

**November 2:**


	9. 1990

**  
**1990  
January 1: 

Carter is nine today. Jesus, how time seems to fly by. I make the same resolution each year, to find the thing that killed you Mary. And I will if it is the last thing I do, this I promise you. Without a doubt.

**January 24:**

Dean turned eleven today. Carter made him a birthday cake. She’s becoming quite the cook. I wonder where in the world Amelia is. I was thinking for a while maybe she could come along with us, but that’s not going to happen. We are on the road again. He asked for his own gun, and I got him one, a Seecamp.32 automatic, the smallest gun I could find that offered any kind of stopping power. With Carter and Sammy’s help we poured silver slugs for it ourselves. We loaded it with alternating silver and Winchester hollowed points. He’s got it in his pockets now.

**May 2:**

Sammy turned seven today. I hope we get him through the first grade this year. He’s a smart little kid. Probably the smartest of my children. But we’ve moved around so much that he is behind in school, even with Dean and Carter working double time to get him caught up. And I haven’t been doing the stuff I need to do with him on that front, I need t be better about reading to him. Carter does it so much, however, I’ve gotten lazy. He needs to read stuff other than field manuals and weird newspaper headlines. He’s ok at math, and he knows his scientific stuff, he’s a boss when it comes to history. The science stuff comes from watching people do weird experiments at the roadhouse. He needs your basic little kid stuff. I’d ask Carter or Dean to do it, but there is only so much you can pile on kids. The pair sharing responsibility for Sammy’s life might be hard enough, neither can be responsible for homeschooling Sammy. God. Again I am reminded how much I need Mary around to help with this shit.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twelfth wedding anniversary. Silk.

**July 4:**

My drinking is starting to get out of hand again.

**October 3:**

I have a fourth child. A son, his name is Adam. Adam Millington Winchester. Amelia brought him to the hotel we were staying at, I suppose technically Jim let her know where we were. She didn’t even bother to stay and give Adam to me, instead she put Adam into Carter’s nine year old arms and walked away. 

I didn’t know about him until I got back from the hunt, almost a week later. Dean and Carter had done wonderful taking care of him. Now we have an almost five month old baby in the backseat of my car. No car seat, no crib. He rides tucked into Dean’s arms or Carters. Adam came with a note. Amelia couldn’t stand to look at herself, knowing she hadn’t waited for marriage. It was one night Mary! One night.

Carter has Adam asleep in the blanket you made for Dean, the one we passed down to her, and then Sammy. She rocks him and sings to him. And it is you made over, I hate her. I don’t know which her, just yet.

I hate the whole situation. I won’t make the same mistake again. I will train Adam to be a hunter, because that is exactly what it takes to be a Winchester. He will never know a mother, he will only know his older siblings.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for seven years.

Adam has a cold.

Carter is in charge of caring for him. So she has been missing school.

**December 25:**

Adam is seven months old, so for Christmas I got him some more onzies. Carter picked them out. I got her a crossbow that would fit her body. She is beyond amazing at using bows and arrows. For Sam I bought him a stack of books. Dean earned more bullets.

Battled a nasty little bugger today. Kicked the beast back to wherever it came from. But as I looked into that sinking mouth, I wondered for the hundredth time: when’s my time going to come? And if something happens to me, who will care for my kids? I have four little lives to worry about now. Adam is so tiny. Dean tries to be the big man a lot, but he’s not even twelve. Carter, she’s got a smart head on her shoulders, she’s going to make a damn fine hunter, maybe better than her brothers, but she’s not even ten. Sammy’s just seven. Jesus, Mary, trying to do this without you is killing me…

Mary…

Mary…

Focus. The beast of bray road. It’s the Black Shuck and the hellhound all over again. Where do these black dogs come from? Agrippa had a black dog, said to be his familiar he freed it from his deathbed and it trotted outside, never to be seen again. If you can believe anything they say about Agrippa. Even Winston Churchill called his depression a black dog. What was really getting to him? He maybe needed a hunter around…

Some Christmas.

The kids made me a card.

 

₦=₦


	10. 1991

**  
1991  
January 1:**

Carter is ten. She and I took her crossbow out, and did some target practice. Adam is doing better. Dean and Sam both asked about getting back to school. Carter doesn’t seem to mind one direction or another about school, but learning comes easy to her and Sam. Carter can read something once and it sticks. Found out Amelia killed herself. Jim told me when I checked in with him. He also asked me to take a trip up to Daniel’s, which is where we are headed now. 

**January 3:**

Something new yesterday. I took out a nest of succubi - at least that’s what everyone I talked to says they were. Sexually predatory, voracious demons. They can change their appearance at will, and they all transformed to look like Mary at one point. God help me, I was weak. It was like seeing her there again, in the flesh, and I let myself believe for just a minute. Or not believe, really. I agreed to their deception. And then, when I’d gotten my head straight again, I killed them. All of them. Was going to stay here for a while, but I think we will move again, eventually we will make our way to Daniel’s. Maybe we will head to New Mexico next, so we would be closer to Daniel all the time. I’m learning a lot from him, even though I’ve still never seen a vampire.

Succubi exist across world mythologies. Judeo-Christians view them as female demons who harvest semen that incubi then use to impregnate women with children who are more readily possessed by demons. Or who are more likely to become witches. 

The succubi I killed said they had plans for the Winchesters. Adam, too. Guess they will have to cancel those plans, hmm?

**January 24:**

Today is Dean’s twelfth birthday. School has started again, but we are on the move once more. Next week we will be residents of Albuquerque, New Mexico. Dean will be a normal sixth grader for the next couple of months, and Carter will be skipping up to meet him in sixth grade, she is more than smart enough. Dean has talked about wanting to play baseball in the spring, and has started getting Carter into the idea of softball in the spring. But I doubt either one will actually do it, it is more or less a way to for them to keep our lives normal in the face of so much supernatural things. When I decide to stay in one place, they both talk about doing everyday things. When we are on the road again, both of them fill up the silence with talk of hunting – figuring out the next place we will land.

I don’t know how my daughter did it, but she found Dean a guitar. It amazes me Mary, they inherited your gift with music and both can play several instruments just by ear. 

**March 17:**

In the last week I watched Sammy play a sunbeam in a school play, Dean make the baseball team, Carter make the softball team (getting her into the sixth grade was so easy), and Adam started to crawl. I killed a demon inhabiting the body of an old woman. It knew something about the succubi, I think. We were being followed. Or are we? Am I getting paranoid? I have every reason to be, don’t I? 

Sammy is going to be doing a science project in the school fair, he is quite taken with his new teacher – Ms. Lyle. She’s encouraging him. Dean and Carter claim there is something off about her, but I’m chalking that up to someone other than me paying attention to Sammy, or more accurately someone other than them seeing how amazing little Sammy is. It was warm enough today that my older three kicked the soccer ball around, while I sat under a tree in the front yard, reading some lore, with a blanket stretched out under me and baby Adam. I am a widower, even in this town, my story has changed a little bit, but I still pitch the “they just lost their mom and have a baby brother, and I am struggling, I didn’t know I needed to bring records…”

**April 1:**

Monday we left Albuquerque. I walked always from another job, sadly, and Sammy was almost kidnapped by some sort of demon. Thank god for Dean and Carter. I hate when those two are bright or smart enough to see something that I miss completely, this time it was there really was something off about Ms. Lyle.

But I am getting ahead of myself, now, Mary, so let me backtrack. Sammy qualified for the science fair. He created a pretty nifty device. His teacher Ms. Lyle said she would take him, since I had Adam and both Carter and Dean had practice. Only, she went the wrong way. Carter told me, in her normal way. Which is yelling and blaming me? I caught up with Ms. Lyle and Sammy at a crossroads. She would have killed me and taken Sammy. But Dean and Carter came through. There is a giant monster coming at me, made of train parts and blood, and the pair of them wrenched out my journal, found the exorcism. As Carter stood on top of the Impala and shouted it out, Dean took chances firing various weapons at the monster to assist with slowing it down. 

God I am so proud of them. I still have no clue what Ms. Lyle wanted with Sam, she just said he was special. Both of them rushed to Sammy before checking on me. They loaded him up, with Adam, who was resting in the floor board of the Impala, Dean climbed in with them, and then little Carter came back for me.

God, Mary she is so much like you, hands on her hips, looking down at me, as I’m sprawled out on my back. “Told you there was something off about that teacher, daddy. Can you please listen to us?” then she helped me up, and we walked to the car. We are on the road again. 

Talked to a young hunter named Bobby, his wife Karen – the same younger sister of Ellen who once watched my kids, what seems like a lifetime ago, was killed by a demon. Bobby had to kill her. While I was talking to Bobby, Sam got out of the Impala before his siblings should stop him and started talking to some guy in a Seville. 

I lectured them all, after that, about talking to strangers. The lecture might have been lost completely on Adam, he’s not even a year yet, but it was worth it. We are headed to Sioux Falls now. 

**April 7:**

Bobby is brilliant in his own right. Between the two of us, we hashed out what is probably happening between the demons and Ms. Lyle. Bobby thinks I am a fool to only just now starting to believe in demons. He’s right, probably. All the signs were there with Ms. Lyle, even the kids saw it before I did. But if you buy demons, you have to buy hell, and if you buy hell, you have to buy Satan, and if that sucker is real, is God real? And if he is, why the hell did he take you, Mary?

I can’t subscribe to them all. Only Bobby says all the demons he has encountered have never laid actual eyes on the devil. But that most of them seem to think the Winchester brood are important for one reason or another. The way Bobby explained it, demons are a lot like us – off they don’t see it they won’t believe it. But I don’t know if I believe in that. 

I guess I think they exist. I think Ms. Lyle was one. Oh, Mary, I was in bed with her… let her around our children, around Adam. I let it trick me away from my mission, let it remove my goal. 

Distract me.

Just like with Amelia, I was lonely, needed touch of some sort. Looking back, it makes me sick. I obviously still cannot keep promises Mary. And for that I am sorry. But I am not sorry for learning.

I have been reading up on crossroads out of Bobby’s library. There is a nearly universal folk-magic tradition that crossroads are gateways between worlds. Robert Johnson: “I went to the crossroads/trying to flag a ride.” And then he writes “Hellhounds on My Trail”, too. Wonder if he knew something… plenty of stories speculate that he should his soul to the Devil. But people have been saying that about musicians since medieval times. 

Another note: criminals and suicides used to be buried at crossroads. A sacrifice to the spirits that used those gateways?

Papa Legba in voodoo magic is the loa of crossroads. You go to him if you want to talk to the iwa. The gods (going back to Yoruba traditions). He is the gatekeeper, also perhaps a psycho pomp – like Eshu (sometimes called Ellegua in the Yourba/Lukumi, later Exu in Brazilian folk magic). Eshu is the patron of travelers, gods of crossroads. He’s also a trickster, sometimes a cruel one. Both Eshu and Papa Legba must be the first of any spirits invoked if a magical or divination ritual is going to work. His symbol called a veve:

Veve is inscribed on the floor in some kind of powder. It can be anything from flower to gunpowder, depending on the ceremony. Hoodoo traditions prescribe certain actions at crossroads to gain gifts in music, love, or power. 

Or money…

**April 18:**

Bobby put me in contact with a friend of his, and Karen’s, Silas. I went to his place and his daughter told me he had been in a coma since last November. More specifically since the seventh anniversary of Mary’s death. He snapped out of the coma long enough for me to learn:

Sammy is special

Carter belongs to the most powerful archangel 

Carter has witch blood in her

Adam is going to be a pawn 

in a war he shouldn’t be a part of

Dean and I need to prepare “for what’s to come”

Then he was gone again, out cold. I have more questions than answers, it seems like it’s always that way. Completely fucked my mind up. Tomorrow I am going to leave Sammy, Carter, and Adam with Bobby. I am going to take Dean hunting. It’s out of season but the Dakota’s are lousy with deer and Dean needs to pull a trigger to sharpen him up. Also I need to think about Sammy.

Learned some more about voodoo. Ogun is the Loa. (or maybe Iwa, or Orisha?) of iron, smithy, hunting, fire, ect. He is a warrior, His veve:

I’ve learned about a magical gun. The story goes that Samuel Colt one Halloween night made a gun and thirteen bullets that could kill anything. Wonder if that gun exists, or if it’s just a hunter legend. And if it exist, I wonder where it is…

**April 19**

Hunting was a disaster.

At least Carter listened and stayed put with Adam when I told her to.

Dean missed his shot, I sent him after a buck, a beautiful 12 pointer, and he dropped the gun when he tripped on the trail. 

Then out of nowhere comes Sammy, who picks up the gun and lays the deer out. An almost eight year old.

Then he tells me that he thought the deer had taken Dean’s gun, and that Sammy had to protect him. 

I guess I really messed our kids up, they view everything as a threat, and that their jobs are legitatmetly to protect one another. I don’t know how to do this, I rely on Carter to mother them, and she’s not even eleven.

Things were worse, however. When Sammy woke, the man in the black Seville was waiting around outside of Bobby’s house. He rode in the Seville to the trail head, and found us from there. 

I feel like I should punish Sam somehow, but I just can’t. it’s my fault.

Bobby sent us all to Silas that night. His eyes alive with fear. We talked for a long time, then Silas asked to talk to Sammy on his own. So, I left Sam with Silas and took Dean, Carter, and Adam for a bite to eat. On the way back I saw the Seville. 

When we got back to Silas, I found Sammy outside. Inside I found something I thought I would never see again. Last time I saw a body completely obliterated was after an artillery strike in Nam. Silas was in pieces, little bits of him painted every wall.

**April 20:**

Carter is a murderer. 

The blood is on my hands now, and hers.

The driver of the Seville introduced himself as Anderson, and then explained he was hunting Sammy. Things escalated and before I knew what was happening Anderson had me on the floor, choking me. Anderson declared that Sammy had been the one to kill Silas. But that’s impossible.

Dean had Adam, and Sam. Was crouched down and hiding in the Impala, like I had told him too. Anderson didn’t hear the tiny footsteps, but I did. Carter has a way about how she walks, simply sounds like leaves rustling. Anderson only noticed her when the gun was cocked and pressed to his temple. “Get the fuck off my daddy.” She snarled. Hair wild, eyes narrow, body squared.

Anderson made to hit her, but she pulled the trigger. Blood splattered across her pale yellow summer dress, and all over me. The gun was the one I bought Dean. She lowered her arm, and cocked her head to the side. “Daddy, are you ok?”

What do you say to that? When your ten year old daughter has to save your ass? I just nodded, and rolled his body off of me. Wrenched her to the other side of the car, and made her change out of the yellow dress. She pulled on some of Sam’s blue jeans and one of Dean’s shirts. 

I think all I write about is death. And you know what? All I ever see is death and I did that to myself. It’s got to end, but it won’t until I end what killed you Mary.

**May 2:**

Sammy is eight today. No matter what they say, Sammy, or who they are, you are special to me because you’re my son. And I am never going to let anything happen to you. I don’t know what’s special about him. He’s just a boy. My boy.

I have started reading about demonology. Because of Bobby. I still have a hard time believing it, so far I’m sorting through a couple of different books that he says are important. They are in the trunk 

**May 8:**

Adam is one. We are somewhere in Kentucky.

We celebrated with cake – Carter is quite the cooker.

She made the cake, and Dean made us dinner.

Have I left them alone long enough they mastered cooking?

They also enjoy laundry.

**May 10:**

A New and Complete Illustration of the Occult Sciences (OS)  
Written by Ebenezer Sibly. Fourth volume in the series begun 1784 and mostly dedicated to astrology. A disciple of Swedenbord and Mesmer. Makes libral use of Reginald Scots Discoverie of Witchcraft and Agrippa’s De Occulta Philisophia.

Pseudomonarchia Daemonum (PD)

Written by Johann Weyer, 1563. Sites other books, it’s in the trunk.

The Testament of Solomon (TS)

Probably written 1st-4th century CE in Solomon’s voice, tells of the building of the Temple and of the binding of numerous demons to perform menial labor. Several of these demons not attested in other sources. The story goes on to explain how Solomon fell in love with a Jebusaean woman, and desired her for a wife, but was told by priest of Moloch that he could not haver her unless he sacrifieced five grasshoppers to Moloch. In a moment of weaknes, he did, and fell away from God, becoming “the sport of idols and demons”.  
One of dozens of text tgat characterize Solomon as an archmagician. Queen of Sheba characterized as witch, unlike her presentation in OT. Also interest that the Koran refers to the tradition that Solomon built the Temple with the assistance of bound demons, see sura 21, 34, 38.

PD on its entry on Gaap, says that Solomon wrote a book on conjurations, and “mingled therewithal al the holy names of God.”

**May 17:**

This would have been our thirteenth wedding anniversary. Lace. Eleven is steel, but the next two are silk and lace. Feels like it should be the other way around. That steel should come later, with time. Aged. Or maybe once you’ve proven you’ve got the strength (steel) to keep a marriage going you can enjoy the finer things (lace and silk).

I’ll never know.

Carter demanded I buy her her own gun.

Guess it’s time.

**June 13:**

Adam took his first steps, with assistance today. Dean holding one of his hands, and Carter the other. He was sick for most of the winter, and took to crawling later than I had hoped, but now he is up and walking, I am sure in no time he will be running. Carter watches him like he is the only thing in the world. Sammy does too. Dean watches them all three, his eyes tired and weary. What have I done to my oldest?

**August 29:**

Dean killed a hunter after Sam today. He used a sawed off shotgun he made himself. It was another mistake on my behalf. I left them alone at a hotel in Washington DC while I was hunting a shape shifter. 

He almost got Sam, too. But Carter put up one hell of a fight, and Dean shot him in the back of the head. Grazed his sister’s shoulder with some of the buckshot. They drug the man’s body into the tub, and cleaned up the blood. Sam and Adam were fast asleep when I made it back. Dean had dug shrapnel out of his sisters shoulder and they had done all they could to clean the scene.

The hunter was hunting Sam. How much longer is this going to happen?

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for eight years now. I’ve been learning about reapers. Carter has been reading about them too. She finds them fascinating. There are more than one and it’s rarely the hooded figure American’s believe in.

Examples of Death Personified Are:  
In modern day European folk lore, Death is known as the Grim Reaper or the Grim Spectre of Death  
In Islam, Death is portrayed as Azrael, the angel of death (note that the name “Azreal” does not appear in any versions of either the Bible or Koran)  
Father Time is sometimes said to be Death  
Psychopomp is a spirit, deity, or other being whose task is to conduct the souls of the recently dead into the afterlife

**December 25:**

The kids are with Bobby. Have been since before Thanksgiving. Sometimes I catch them reading the journal. Sammy is more interested in it than Dean or Carter. I know once I am gone, and I realize the mortality rate in this lifestyle is really high, one of them will take over recording. 

They won’t be reading the journal tonight, because here we are, Christmas night and over two hundred miles of scrub prairie and desert lies between me and them. No Christmas tree, no carrots and milk for Santa and the Reindeer. A couple of weeks ago I handed them presents. And they gave me a set of night vision goggles, I would almost wonder how they pinched them, but the older two are masterminds. I imagine they came from that gun show back in Amarillo.

They’re growing up without me. The three oldest are starting to act out in their own ways. Adam isn’t old enough to rebel just yet, but I am sure the day will come. I think they act out because we are apart so much. Sam gets resentful and has trouble keeping his anger in. Carter stops talking and often ignores direct commands. Dean tries to fix everything and keep us together as a team. They shouldn’t have to live like this. No one should.

After this year… the succubi and Ms. Lyle (Lilith?), Silas… this has been a rough one. They came after my kids. We made it, but they’re going to keep coming. This enemy doesn’t quit until they are dead, and I don’t even know who’s sending them. How do I fight this?

And how do I avoid this question: would they be better off somewhere else, with someone else, living normal lives?

No. I am their father.  
They belong with me.   
I’m drinking again.

 

Merry Christmas, everyone.

 

₦=₦


	11. 1992

**  
1992  
January 1**

Carter is eleven. I missed her birthday this year. She was with Bobby. He asked her if she would like to go with him to hunt down a series of books. She agreed, and I trust Bobby more than anyone else in this world. I can’t help but think how amazing he would have been had Karen and he had children. I remember how happy she was with the kids, when she watched them.  
That seems like a life time ago.

**January 24:**

Dean will be thirteen today. He’s gotten stocky, and is starting to fill out, looking more like a man every day and that breaks my heart and makes me proud at the same time. I don’t know what to do, other than keep guiding them the best I can. For his birthday we went to dinner at this greasy spoon in Flint, Michigan called Mama Janer’s. It is freezing and miserable here, and we are headed even further north. Adam has a cold again, I believe he has asthma. It is something I will have to look into at some point. I’ve been hearing about shape shifters in the North Woods.

Strange of them to be active this late in the year. Since there are not many out and about for them to prey on. But who am I to judge a monsters decision. It does however make me think something big might be happening. Outside L’Anse, in a roadhouse full of Indians, I heard something interesting. A story about an Indian ensnaring the cruel woman he worked for simply to get revenge. I could not imagine getting married for anything other than love – Mary you ruined me for that.

**March 30:**

I thought we had learned our lessons about talking to strangers, I feel like it was addressed very well back in Wisconsin. Apparently not. I left the children alone to play on the Beach at Twin Lakes State Park. A skin walker took on the guise of a park ranger and tried to lure them away. They trusted the uniform. I believe I shall have to change my method of teaching. We cannot trust anyone but each other, and Bobby. I took the skin walker down and had a total field day with my three oldest, I must have looked terrifying because even baby Adam who was tucked to Carter’s hip was shivering and crying. 

I have to be hard on them. Especially Dean. I have to be harder on him these days because I’m not always around and I need him to keep an eye on the younger three. I am almost just as hard on Carter because she knows the rules, she and Dean are the two who will no doubt take over for me. They are devout little soldiers. 

They are badasses, though. Especially Dean. I thought I was tough when I was thirteen, but Dean, he would have kicked my ass six ways to Sunday.

**May 2:**

Sammy is nine today, he’s starting to get tall. He and Carter are both bean poles. Thin and spidery. Last year on his birthday we were hightailing it out of Albuquerque. This year I almost lost all four of them to a skin walker. They are getting better at hunting, but they still have so much to learn. I don’t want them to hurt. But I need them to be able to hurt others. 

**May 8:**

Adam is two. Dear lord, I have no clue how I have kept that cute little blonde baby boy alive. He has one brown eye and one blue eye. It freaked me out at first, Carter told me it might just take a little longer for the blue to change. She’s a pretty smart kid, reads at an eleventh grade level. Sam reads way above his level too. Not sure exactly where, he is mad at me because he is a year behind when it comes to school.

Adam pronounces names in the cutest manner. I am “Dada”, Dean is “Beannnnie”, Carter is “Tot” which I believe is short for Tater Tot, which is something her mother and Dean lovingly called her in the old world. Adam calls Sam “Ammy.” He has a problem with S’s. Today finds us in Baltimore. We normally avoid big cities, but I have a haunted library to deal with, a friend of Bobby’s called it in. Said he’d take care of it himself, but he didn’t want to enter one of America’s most haunted libraries on his own. My back up? Dean and Carter. 

Loaded to their teeth with salt rounds in their shotguns.

I am leaving Sammy and Adam in the Impala while we take care of the baddies.

I trust Dean and Carter, not to solo hunt, but to help me out on hunts.

This will be a good springboard to see how they handle themselves under pressure.

**May 9:**

They were amazing, oh, God, Mary. Dean and Carter are grade A shots, they always hit their marks. And they didn’t run or scream once. They moved around each other like dancers, they were hyper aware of where each other were at all times. I realized that I had made them a team, the kind of team you cannot and more than likely will not break up ever. They rely on each other more than they do me. And that terrifies me.

**May 11:**

List of creatures that change their shape or are forced to.

**May 17:**

This would have been our fourteenth anniversary. Ivory.

When I told Carter that, she giggled.

When I asked her why she was giggling.

Both Sam and Dean looked at me and said, Elephants. 

I didn’t get it. 

But now I do. Ivory comes from elephants, elephants have amazing memories.

They were complimenting me.

**June 21:**

Sammy had a nightmare in the middle of the night, he woke up and I rushed to his side. Carter and Dean share a bed, Adam and Sam share a bed. He told me he was afraid of the thing in the closet. I checked it out and didn’t see anything. I’ve seen too much to think that to be true. If Sammy believed something was in there, more than likely he was correct. 

So I handed Sammy the .45 and told him next time he saw it, he would know exactly what to do. I doubt I will win any awards from ANY parenting organization. For the last five nights Sammy has slept through the night. Sometimes a .45 under your pillow is all you need. I’ve been drinking heavily again, it comes in cycles like waves that wash over me. At times I think I am beating the need to drink, then something comes up.

I see the way Carter watches me. How her eyes narrow. She watches me with something between awe and displeasure. Dean looks at me like a hero. Sammy looks at me like the enemy. Adam doesn’t seem to notice me when I am here, he has eyes only for Carter.

Am I doing right by my children? I am eight years into this, I think it is too late now to try a different route.

Talked to Daniel, he says Vampires don’t change shapes – that’s an invention by Bram Stoker.

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead nine years. Oh. For nine years this quest has been everything. I have accumulated enough stuff that I need a storage space. Carter is the one I trusted to help me pack the first boxes in. Sammy and Adam are curious about things, and Dean can be a bit on the clumsy side.

**December 25:**

This year Sammy got a crossbow. Carter asked for her ears pierced. Dean and Adam both just asked for food. We ate at a small Chinese restaurant in Chicago, Illinois. This is the closest I have been to Mary’s grave. I never wanted to be this close to her headstone. They got me a gun. Don’t know how they found it. Must have been at that pawn shop in New Orleans. It’s an Ivory handled .9mm. Beautiful and useful.

Carter carved the word “Winchester” into it.

 

₦=₦


	12. 1993

**  
1993  
January 1:**

Carter is twelve. And unfortunately the first of girl problems arose, actually it started on December 28th. Carter had her first period, I wasn’t there, thank God Bobby didn’t mind the freaked out phone call from Dean. He drove from Sioux Falls to Little Rock. I was on a hunt, and had strayed further than I had intended. Bobby is a good man.

I bought her a pair of boots with knives made into the toes. All she has to do is click her heel on the floor twice, and the blade emerges. 

**January 24:**

Dean is fourteen today. He took off to the movies with a girlfriend, I think her name was Katie. She is in the same grade as Dean and Carter. They are both freshmen in high school this year. Can you believe it? The great state of Arkansas didn’t even bother to argue with me when I told them Carter might be 12 but she was definitely more than smart enough for the ninth grade.  
Quite the lady killer, Dean. Like I was at his age. Hell-raising, foul-mouthed, full of piss and vinegar. Carter hasn’t quite hit that stage yet, but I see it coming. Silas had it right, Dean is me made over. If I am not careful with him by the time he is twenty he will have left a trail of kids and arrest warrants all over the country.

**March 11:**

Carter has her first boy friend, a boy Dean’s age. They are going on a double date tonight. We will be on the road again tomorrow; I didn’t have the heart to tell them. 

**April 19:**

_Davidians. Koresh from David and Cyrus. Cyris the only gentile given the designation of “MESSIAH” in the Tanakh. Thomas Jefferson consulted Xenophon’s biography of Cyprus when drafting the “Declaration of Independence” – April 19 also Lexington and Concord. Also Birthday of Eliot Ness._

**May 2:**

Today Sammy is ten. It was a lousy day, for him and me. He is on a soccer team at this new school. Carter is cheer leading and Dean is into football, at least for right now. But, Sammy is pretty good at soccer, and today was a game day. But it’s only a game, and on Saturday’s we always do some kind of shooting now that he is big enough. Today was bow hunting.

Carter remained at home with Adam. So this was just me, Sam, and Dean. Nothing is in season, so we were just going to practice targets, that’s what’s important anyway. They need to know everything, including every way to kill something. For Christ sake, there are demons ACTIVELY after Sammy. He needs to know how to fight them, and Dean needs to know how to protect him. 

I don’t think Carter would flinch when it comes to killing for her brothers, it’s a chilling thought, thinking back to the head shot she gave Anderson. I stopped fussing about their language that day, they are growing up in seedy bars.  
Sammy’s a kid though, and he wants to play soccer. He’s even more stubborn than I am when he really decides to dig in his heels. Guess he got something from me after all. But I am their father, and what I say goes. We went out with the bows, Carter promising to have a good birthday meal fixed for Sammy when we got back, Adam on her hip.

I can’t blame Sammy for wanting a normal life, but I wouldn’t be much of a dad if I didn’t prepare him for the world they are living in. doing what’s right for you kids doesn’t always mean doing what they want. Especially in my case.

**May 8:**

Adam is three. He talks better than any other three year old I have ever met, knows his alphabet, knows sign language, and is good enough with Latin it could easily be his second language. Carter is a phenomenal mother to him.

Dean is amazing with Adam as well. Dean I have learned cooks dinner when I am on the road, and Carter keeps Sammy up to date in his schooling. They always seem to have nicer things each time I see them. Not sure if they are getting that good at shop lifting or what, but Adam’s birthday gift was pretty amazing. 

Carter, Dean, and Sam got him this little educational computer type toy. It plays all these different songs, and teaches him to count to like one hundred. I happened to see one in a Big Lots the other day and it was well over two hundred dollars, and the box is rather bulky, not sure how in the hell…

**May 15:**

Dealt with a Tulpa. The physical form of a tulpa only becomes apparent once the mind registers its spiritual presence. Once created, no matter the creator's intent, will eventually turn on their maker. Evans-Wentz wrote that enlightened magicians can destroy tulpa as easily as create them – also that those masters can incorporate their spiritual being into the body of another person. It’s all about willpower.

**May 17:**

This would have been our fifteenth wedding anniversary. Crystal. Crystal balls, divination, prisms… I long to talk to you so bad Mary. Why don’t I dream about you anymore? I can’t even remember your smell, or the way your eyes shined. 

**July 4:**

Adam likes fireworks. Or maybe as a small child he has been around guns so much that he doesn’t mind the noise the booms across the night sky make. I don’t know where I am. I woke up, after passing out, woke up in Culpepper. The kids are in Sioux Falls. 

Bobby has been keeping a close eye on Carter. I am not sure why. But I think it has to do with the fact that things about her don’t add up. I swear Mary I saw her levitate something the other day. She just was staring at Adam’s toy which was out of reach, by a good two feet, then it was in her hands. And she laughed when I asked her about it. Like it was funny.

Dean, Sammy, Carter, and Adam are all at Bobby’s. I had a rough hunt last month, and a rawhide sort of got a little closer than anticipated to Dean and Carter. Both were pretty beaten up. They are going to go to school for a while in Sioux Falls.

**September 5:**

Talked with Carter on phone tonight. Sammy is happy. Adam is happy. Dean and Carter are learning some things for Bobby. Apparently Rufus Turner showed up and needed help hiding a body … I think this is normal behavior for the large southern black man, not terribly sure. Eitherway, Bobby had to go on a “short” hunt and left both Carter and Dean with scripts for “manning” the phones until he returns. Bobby mostly runs some sort of “Hunters Hub” where they call for lore information or other junk, sometimes to help keep their cover. Carter is really good at the phone manning, and getting the information together for those who call or want to stop by. Dean not so much.

The reason for her call, however was to let me know that an interesting tip came through regarding some demons a group of hunters took out near Springfield. The demons knew the kids were not with me, and were speculating as to where the Winchester children were. She and Dean have gone into high alert and for now are keeping Sammy and Adam home from school, with a neatly forged note that Carter wrote, indicating the whole family had mono.

**November 2:**

It’s been ten years. Been thinking about urban legends pretty much all year, when I am sober, I know I am not doing right by the kids with all the drinking…I wonder if what happened in our house all those years ago isn’t a urban legend in Lawrence these days. I’ve been a little crazy these last ten years, and on this day somehow it is easier for me to take a step back and see exactly how crazy I have been. Ten years later, I still wake up wanting revenge. But this year I am thinking about the vision of Mary I saw at Jim’s place, just a few weeks after she died. 

Whenever I think about that I wonder about how I might see her again, talk to her. Truth be told, I am scared to try because of what happened at Jim’s. And because after reading about so many séances I know exactly how unpredictable and dangerous they actually are. So I hold myself back.

Here’s irony for you, today I was reading about one particular urban legend. Bloody Mary.

**November 28:**

_I believe dad had another version of Bloody Mary written in here, but which one is as good a guess as any. All Bloody Mary stories focus on a mirror, none seem to differentiate on the importance of the mirror… But, there is pretty much a Bloody Mary scenario everywhere, the important thing to take away from said scenarios is: it’s bad luck to break mirrors because they’re reflections of the soul, but also because they hold the future. That’s why the seven years of bad luck, you’ve broke your future._

**December 25:**

Christmas in Joplin, Missouri. The kids got me a book that they must have knocked from a shop whilst I was looking in the esoteric shelves. Some other version of me, out there in a world where school teachers don’t turn into demons, might have managed to raise my kids without turning them into thieves. But for us, it’s a necessary evil. I try to discourage them from taking things we don’t need. All three of the older ones are bad about knocking candy for Adam. Anyway, it’s an old book on theosophy. All hunters I know are convinced that Blavatsky was a fraud, but I’ll take a look at it. You never know where you might find a clue.

 

₦=₦


	13. 1994

**1994  
January 1:**

Who knew teenage girls were so damn hard to deal with? Seriously. For one Carter could be your twin, she looks so much like you it breaks my heart in two. She wants to sing in the school choir, but I am afraid to let her. She was singing “Hey Jude” to the boys the other day, and I had to make her stop – that is something I don’t think I am ready for. I realize she probably has been singing them songs for a very long time without my warning.

She’s thirteen now.

Strange money continues to come in. We never seem to be out of clothing, food, or weapons anymore. Carter got taller, and finally needs a bra. She called my cell from a pay phone, but by the time I returned to the hotel, Dean had already taken care of what his younger sister needed. 

They pair of them are sophomores this year. She’s dating one of Dean’s friends – some guy name Jake. We never stay anywhere long though, and I believe that Dean and her are of the same ideology, that there is no need to make lasting relationships. 

The other thing about Carter, is she doesn’t take no for an answer, wonder where she gets that from, Mary, I believe I can blame that on you. She demanded out right demanded I let her get another piercing. When I asked her where she pointed to her lip. I told her no, guess it didn’t matter, when I came home she had a lip ring. I believe Sammy helped her with it. It would ruin her pretty face to take it out now. It does look good, brat.

**January 24:**

Dean is now fifteen. A week ago he helped me take out a spirit haunting a grocery store owned by an Indian family in Erie, Pennsylvania. When I say helped, he did it with my supervision. It was like any other spirit – you find bones, salt and burn, repeat if necessary. Except it wasn’t. so far as a family we have learned that all spirits have at least one thing in common. But it matters who they are haunting. It matters what their traditions were when they were alive. Have been reading Indian mythology. Gods upon Gods, it’s so much!

Two that keep popping up: pishacha and acheri

**May 2:**

Sammy is eleven today. When Dean turned eleven he wanted a gun, wanted independence or something like that. Sammy handed me a list of books and a computer. That right there should tell you all you need to know about the differences in my sons. I got him his computer, too. A Macintosh Performa. It’s in the trunk right now, but every time we sleep with a roof over our head, he’s going to want to get it out and play with it. He was telling me about the internet today. His older siblings get it, I guess. I am not sure I fully understand what it is. Looks like Team Winchester took a huge leap forward when it comes to information gathering. For once Sammy has promised to teach me to use the computer, we will see how long that last. 

Carter and Dean are mad, in unison, and that’s always an awful thing. They were at school, and I was watching Adam when he fell, on the swings. Busted his forehead up real good. Thirty stitches later, Carter laid me out, damn if she didn’t sound just like you, Mary, screeching at me. She informed me that once she hit fourteen she would like her GED.

Dean is of the same logic, at sixteen he would like to complete his GED. That’s a high school education. I think Carter wants out of school so she can home school Sam and Adam, and I am more than ok with that. Dean just wants to be done with going new places. 

**May 8:**

Adam is four today. One more year and he will be ready for school. Except by then maybe Carter will be old enough to have her GED or I will keep him out of school. Haven’t decided. I am having trouble remembering Mary more every day. I don’t even remember how Amelia looked, Adam’s mother. She was a blonde maybe? She was deaf. But I suppose Adam isn’t he’s on point with his mile stones, according to Carter. Who takes him to the doctor and everything that he needs to do.

Without Carter I would be lost, Mary. She keeps us on track. Reminds me that the boys have to have physicals, reminds us all that holidays exist, signs forms for Sammy to go on field trips. The looks she gives me though, are a reminder that somewhere deep down inside Carter resents me. I don’t know why and I might never know. Other than she disagrees with me on everything related to Sam and Adam.

**May 17:**

Today would have been sixteen years together. No traditional gift or substance. Sammy suggested maybe sixteen was about falling in love again. In England it would be tungsten. Tungsten? How is that romantic?

**October 31:**

Witches known to change into rabbits, cats, other familiar animals. Halloween costumes are a surviving remnant of the belief that transformed witches would be abroad before all Hallows’ Eve…

**November 2:**

Mary has been dead for eleven years. Eleven: doubled 1, said to represent a stand of DNA. Also balance. Prime number. First number you cannot count on both hands. Eleventh of the major arcane is Justice.

**December 11:**

Wendigo

**December 25:**

Carter was singing Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer when I came in from my hunt tonight. There were presents and a couple branches assembled to make a tree of sorts. Adam was clapping and singing along. For the first time, I caught Adam calling Carter momma. And I felt the tears in the back of my eyes. Adam is Carter’s. One hundred percent. No denying it. She’s given up so much, her and Dean both. And I can’t believe how lucky I am that my oldest two are so devote and loyal. If only Sammy and Adam would follow in their footsteps.

Sammy has been teaching me about the computer. 

But it’s not worth what I paid for it, when it comes down to it. I’ve been alternating Carter and Dean out on hunts with me. they are both so amazing and in their element. The problem? 

They are going to be much better hunters than me. I fear I have started a tradition and a lifelong legacy, if they have kids I worry they will be raised this way.

I swore Mary I would do whatever needed to avenge you. If whatever killed you was a supernatural element I can swear now your grandchildren, should you have any, will carry on the mission.

 

₦=₦


	14. 1995

**1995  
January 1:**

Carter is fourteen, the state of Kentucky refuses to let her take her GED. Apparently that’s a federal thing, and it requires a minimum of 15. Both her and Dean will be finishing their sophomore year this year. Neither like the school system they are currently in. Sammy will be in seventh grade, if we can get him through the sixth, and a mess. Adam will start kindergarten. She’s you made over. Kid you not. She’s smart like you, and I can’t help but tell her, God blessed me with her so I would never be completely without you.

Money is starting to get tight now. Adam is growing faster than we can keep clothes on him. Dean just went through a growth spurt, and it looks like Sammy is going to hit one any day!

**January 14:**

Werewolves

**January 24:**

Dean is now sixteen. We had to run, again. We are now in Montana. We are trailing a werewolf, thus the research. All that bow-hunting practice is going to come in handy. Carter and Adam both have a flu of some sort. So I am trusting Dean as my back up. Sometimes you can’t use a gun. Tomorrow when we hunt this thing, Dean is charge.

**January 25:**

Bull’s eye! Dean is a hell ova shot! With anything, Carter is too, but damn. Seeing Dean finally start coming into his own as a hunter makes me proud. Not all hunters subscribe to the silver bullet junk, and Lycanthropy might have a cure, but that’s spotty. According to some legend, killing a particular werewolf removes its curse on all those its bitten – severing the bloodline, in a way. 

**April 20:**

Headed to Oklahoma City. More than two people involved. Word already out amongst hunters that McVeigh had some questionable associates. Possible supernatural angle. Sightings around area three days prior to explosion. Daniel says he has heard something about freak weather.

35º28’ N 97º32’ W

**May 2:**

Today Sammy turned twelve. He’s a handful. Spends all his time on the computer, unless he is arguing with me. the only person who gets any leeway with him is Carter. I can’t understand him, and I don’t believe he cares to try to understand me. Carter can understand both of us. I caught her and Sammy in the bubble bath with Adam the other night, I might have said something, but he was smiling. Typical father-son troubles, but it feels worse because instead of having a mother as a go between, we have Carter. Although she understands both of us, it’s not like she has a life of experiences to draw from.

Sammy wants to be normal. The older he gets the more he wants it. Stay in one place, live a normal life. God I want that for him, so bad. But it’s not possible right now. The older he gets the more I need his help on hunts. Carter is going to have her hands full very soon with Adam, and he is much too young to hunt. Sammy has to understand that. We are going to finish this quest, get our revenge, and he is going to be a part of it.

**May 8:**

Adam is five. Dear god.   
The time has flown. 

Dean and Carter threw him a vampire themed party. Adam reads the lore books, and that’s what he wanted. I walked in to a particularly funny scene, with two Dracula’s and Mrs. Dracula. Glow in the dark fangs, and ridiculous make up bite marks on their necks. Adam was some sort of vampire king, he had a crown and everything. 

I have no clue how this became my life.

Sam continues to ignore me. he offers to remain at the hotel with Adam more now, knowing I need Carter or Dean on a hunt.

**May 17:**

We would have been together seventeen years today. Had we been British, the gift would have been turquoise. But Americans don’t believe in seventeenth anniversaries, I guess. And I never got to have one. Turquoise carvings placed in Native American graves to attract good spirits and guard the grave. Also, turquoise tied onto a bow was supposed to make you shoot more accurately.

Levi: “Superstition is the sign  
surviving the thought; it is the dead  
body of a religious rite.”  
Right mixture of the seven gives  
Electrum per Alchemists

**July 7:**

Something bad happened. My anger got the better of me, and we were out of money. Being angry and drinking never did much for me, but you know that. Because you left me more than once for this. We had no money for gas in the Impala. I stormed into the hotel room, only to find all four kids in their pajamas snuggled together. Eating. 

I jerked Carter up by her hair, she was the closest to me. she had shorts and a sports bra on, I didn’t even let her put shoes on. I drug her to the bar, and tossed her in. A man bought her for $600. I seriously don’t know what came over me, but… I can’t take it back now. 

I took the money, then when the man was done, I chucked her back into the hotel room. When I came home, I found Dean holding her, Adam wedged between Sam and Carter. In the early morning light you could see the bruises that coated her throat and shoulders, she’s silent, not talking to me. The face Dean has pulled all morning lets me know, I might not be his hero anymore.

**August 22:**

Carter once more was a paycheck. I recall Ellen once mentioning why she refused to hunt with Bill. Now I get it, it’s too easy to use what you have in your wheelhouse. This time it was only $250. But enough to get us on the road. Dean and her have money regardless. Don’t know where it comes from.

**November 2:**

Don’t judge me too harshly. Carter no longer waits for me to tell her what to do. She drops money on front seat of the Impala. She doesn’t speak to me at all. Adam crawled in her lap, and Sam rested against her. Dean glares at me. Mary has been dead for twelve years...

**November 13:**

Sammy’s soccer team won divisional championship. On to the state playoffs. I promised Carter we would try to stay here for it. After she lit into me. I’m proud as hell of Sam, but I am sad for him too. He’s battling to keep himself together the only way he knows how, by rebelling. Only because he’s Sammy, he rebels towards being normal. I get it, even if I can’t let it keep happening. We owe Mary too much to give it up now. But I am going to keep his trophy.

**December 1:**

I broke a promise to Carter. It’s something I am getting good at. We are on the move again. Sammy threw his soccer trophy. Dean and I managed to put it back together. The boys are in the back asleep. Carter has her head in my lap and is fast asleep. I’ve pulled over under a Texaco Sign to do some research. Biblical stuff:

**December 25:**

I don’t know what my children are doing for Christmas this year. They are with Jim.

 

₦=₦


	15. 1996

**1996  
January 1:**

Carter, Dean, and Sam, as well as Adam are now ordained and can bless holy water, that’s what I get for leaving them with Jim while I took out a revenant. Carter is fifteen. She is stocky, muscular, and wears an amused expression most of the time. I realize that it is probably her amusement with me, with my trying to keep everything together, it’s not working. Carter hates me, I’ve realized at least to some decree. She respects me because of loyalty not love. The last time she said I love you to me was the night after she killed Anderson. Maybe that was when she realized what she was to me. My third in command. Adam calls her momma, and watches her every move. Adam is loyal, but not to me. He calls Dean “Beanie” or “Daddy.”

**January 8:**

Woke up and Carter was gone.

Dean was gone too.

Sam told me they always go out after I pass out. Adam confirmed. 

What are my oldest two up too?

**January 19:**

I should not have went poking around. Both my oldest, it seems, have a tendency to make money by selling themselves. I always thought I made Carter to it, and that was my sin, but the conversation I overheard tonight between Dean and Carter suggest that both of them keep the kids fed that way.

**January 24:**

Dean turned seventeen today. We went shooting. Carter was sulking with Adam and Sammy. Sammy wanted help with his homework, and Adam wanted to go to the library. Then I sent Dean out on his first completely solo hunt. I’ve let him take the lead before, but I’ve always been there OR Carter to catch him, to have his back. This time he is purely on his own. Partly it’s a test, and partly I want some time with Sammy. I plan on sending Carter and Adam to a fair a town over. Should be no problem for Dean. Ghost of two nuns haunting St. Stephen’s Indian Mission in Riverton, Wyoming. Simple salt-and-burn mission. We scoped the situation out, figured that something must be left behind that’s now a focal point for the hunting. Nuns in love. 

Discovered they killed themselves. 

The kids are old enough now to stay on their own. Dean and Carter could do solo hunts if I could trust Sammy to watch Adam. I am hoping now we can start spending more time in one place, with me or the older two heading out on hunts. I’m thinking California. When I need to fly solo I can trust Dean and Carter to keep the younger two in check. When we go on a hunt together they could bring their homework, instead of changing school like they do fake last names.

That’s actually what I wanted to talk to Sammy about. It’s going to be hard enough to get his bullheaded adolescent self through these teen years without having to fight him on being Jimmy Normal. We can make this work if we do it together, at least Carter says so. You know, Mary, she is so much like you that steady calm and peacefulness. He’s going to have to understand everyone pulls their weight, and avenging you comes first.

Dean took care of the nuns just like I thought he would. But, he ended up calling Carter in, not me. it was more than one trinket that tied their souls. And for a moment I think I was jealous of my teenage daughter. They are dangerously codependent Mary. All of my children are.

**March 11:**

Called fossil man by the locals, but possible cannibal owl? Oka-moo-butch, Shoshone legend of being that would take bad children and sometimes unwary hunters. Associated folk lore of children learning magic or hunting while in the Owl’s captivity, sometimes learning to turn his tricks against him. Shoshone, Paute, Shuswap.

To Shoshone, petro glyph sites known as poha kahni, house of power. Spirit world closer to the surface here. After ritual bath in a hot spring, the shaman went to Poha Kahni and entered a trance to journey in the spirit world and capture power, or return with knowledge of kidnapped souls.

**April 29:**

Today I asked Carter to sing “Hey Jude”, “Penny Lane”, and “I wanna hold your hand”. She gave me a soft look, for the first time in a long time, and a small smile. When she was done, she whispered “I don’t hate you, I just don’t agree with what you want for Sammy and Adam, daddy.” Then she kissed me on the forehead, with her painted red lips, her metal lip ring cold against my skin. She’s so much like you, and all that defiance, Jesus, Mary. It’s like having you as a teenager and not being able to love you.

**May 2:**

Sammy is thirteen. I don’t know how we made it to this moment, but I am damn proud. The problem is he had to retake the sixth grade, so now he is a year behind schedule and mad about it. Carter assured him once she and Dean graduated or got their GED they would get him caught up. I’m worried about Sammy. When Dean hit thirteen I worried about booze and girls, with Carter I worried about the boys I knew she would be taking up with since she had joined Dean’s class, and I worried about her mouth getting her in trouble. The sass on that girl is so fierce. 

But with Sam, it’s different. He has so much bottled up in side. He’s different, my Sam. I think he feels haunted about being in the room with Mary when she died. He feels like he should be able to remember something, and that he can’t. God it must be awful to know you remember something but will never be able to talk about it because when you witnessed it you didn’t fully comprehend what was happening. I know he had questions about Ms. Lyle, I know Carter answered those for me. I owe our daughter for her patience. 

**May 8:**

Adam is another year older. Six. In the first grade. On schedule. Smarter than everyone he knows. He gets bored playing with the kids he is supposed to play with. Carter is teaching him runes as I sit in the living room of this crappy three bedroom apartment I managed to rent us. Carter has been off lately, like something is bothering her and she doesn’t want to talk about it.

I have noticed some interesting things about our daughter, so I wanted to research your family, the Campbell line is extinct with our children being the last alive. Jake would have known if there was any witch blood in your family. Carter can do things that make no sense, like things appearing for her when she needs them, or being able to know one of her brothers need her without them even whispering it.

Bobby suggested I am just freaking out because I don’t want to lose Carter, because she is so much like you. She looks more like you every day, and sounds more like you. Maybe he right. 

**May 17:**

This would have been our seventeenth wedding anniversary. Bismuth. A brittle metal, silver white with tinges of pink and other colors. 

I bought Carter a bismuth bracelet.

**June 17:**

-Slave haunting Lynchburg.  
-Clinton Court, Hells Kitchen, NY  
-Hickory Hill, Equality, Il  
-Becker Farm, Selkirck, NY  
-Henry Hudson Park, Glenmount, NY  
-Florence, AL  
-Glenva, AL  
-Gadson, AL  
-Jacksonville, AL  
-Mobile, AL  
-Steele, AL  
-Crosby, TX  
-Augusta, GA  
-Newman, GA  
-Pokomoke Forest, MD  
-Mt. Misery Road, NC  
-Layle, SC 

****August 21:** **

Carter brought me another book written by Agrippa. It is in the trunk as well. 

****November 2:** **

Oh, Mary, my sweet love, you have been gone thirteen years. I thought by now I would have avenged you, and maybe settled the kids down. I don’t know what to say. I know I have failed you every year I have resolved to find your killer. You’ve been gone longer than I knew you. What does that say about me that I’ve devoted more of my life to your death than I ever did your life? If only I could see you again, just once, so I could ask her if she thinks I’m doing the right thing… but remember what happened at Jim’s that first time. Would it be her? How would I know? Also remember Ms. Lyle. 

Life is about remembering the dead and protecting the living. 

You know who said that? 

**Dean Winchester.**

Our oldest is quiet the poet when he wants to be! Met and alchemist who believes the souls of the dead can be pinned into homunculi. Offered to do this for me, with you. I turned him down, but it wasn’t easy. Spirits that can’t go turn bad, and I couldn’t stand to see that happen to you. I’ve seen it happen to too many people who were loved by hunters. 

****November 14:** **

**Alchemist further researched.**

****December 25:** **

Carter demanded we all be together. I understand her reasoning. Adam is almost seven. He starts to ask where I go, where Dean goes, and where Carter goes. I sent her on her own hunt, around November 21st, wish I would have written it down. Dean was upset because I sent Carter after ghouls instead of spirits. How do you tell your bad-ass son that his younger sister keeps a cooler head, and has read more of the lore. 

You don’t, you just shrug and say, “I wanna know what your sister can handle.” 

She handled it just fine, in case you were worried, Mary. Took out eight ghouls on her own, and met a hunter, that she brought home with her. His name is Deacon Kaylor. I knew him in another life. He’s quite taken with Carter. They will be headed to his ranch in a couple months to get some practice in with ken do sticks, this was his last planned hunt, and he is going to be a Warden at some jail. 

So Deacon spent Christmas with us, he showed Adam how to rig a liter strong enough to drag Dean through the woods. My youngest son is going to be in training soon. Carter and Dean are in charge of educating him. I plan on taking the boy with me shooting in February. We didn’t exchange real presents, instead we (being Deacon and I) shared war stories as the kids listened intently. 

**₦=₦**


	16. 1997

**1997  
January 1:**

Carter is another year older. Sixteen and wild. She has declared that one Dean and her graduate she will be doing her solid best to raise her siblings. Except, then she went and got her GED, forged my signature. So, one kid has completed their education! I meant to buy myself a drink, I ended up having more than I should have. Now I am drunk.

**January 7:**

Detroit, Michigan

**January 24:**

Dean is eighteen today. I keep pressuring to not get his GED. But he followed his baby sister. Now two of them are out of school. God, Mary, I know if you were here they would both be in school preparing for college. I gave Dean the Impala, the car is now 30 years old, amazing it runs as good as it does. I’ve taught Dean and Carter a lot of what I know about cars, which educationally ends in 1983. Haven’t kept it up since then all the computer and emissions crap is too much for me. Give me a fat 327, no electronics, just pistons, crankshaft and a gas pedal. That’s a car. And now it’s my sons. I am still going to drive it, some. Until I get a bike. He will need the arsenal more than me. I’ve become a bonafide selective demon hunter. My kids hunt everything else. He’s a man now, and this was the only rite of passage I could think of. He goddamn better take good care of it.

**February 23:**

Poltergeist

**April 28:**

Heard from Bobby today, or rather Carter did. She keeps up with our hunter friends better than I do. Bobby Singer, Rufus Turner, and Deacon are the major ones. Carter gave me the phone when Bobby asked her too. Apparently he and a group of hunters heard about several possible demonic possessions around a small town in South Dakota – they got there and nothing. Spent a lot of time talking to Bobby about Demons. Then about Carter. He continued to tell me to stop being paranoid.

**April 30:**

Carter found an exorcism for an entire area or community...

**May 2:**

Sammy is fourteen today. Carter has started to teach him how to drive. Instead of getting him a birthday gift, I bought an older Bonneville. I’ll be driving that until Carter is about eighteen, then I’ll pass it on to her. She’s a different breed of hunter than her brother. She doesn’t need an arsenal, she does with what she has. Not sure how I feel about that.

Sammy has been having strange dreams again, I only know this because I found Carter sleeping in his bed. When any of my sons have nightmares they want Carter. I’ve tried to keep an eye out for any signs that he is in any way not a regular kid. He’s sensitive, has a big imagination, but that’s about it. Plus now that he is hitting adolescence he is a huge pain in the ass. Dean just chased girls and snuck beers, Carter got some tattoos and snuck beers (she doesn’t know I know about the music note on her ribs). Both of those were teenage troubles I could understand. But Sammy just shuts down. With everyone me at least. He shares with Dean and Carter. When he does start talking again, it is to argue. He’s got all the willpower us Winchester’s are known for, but in him it sits quietly. You don’t notice it’s there until he decides he feels strongly enough about something that he won’t compromise. Then you might as well wrestle angels.  
 **May 8:**

Adam is seven, how do these kids keep growing? Adam is going to be tall like Sammy and Dean. Carter didn’t get lucky. Adam is enjoying third grade. He likes his teachers, and he likes being around the other kids. He likes country music, and I’ll catch him and Carter dancing and singing in the kitchen sometimes. Carter made him a large birthday cake with sigils on it.

**May 10:**

Quincunx

**May 23:**

Samuel Colt

**June 3:**

Golden Ratio

**June 16:**

I received the letters for both Dean and Carter, assuring me that they had passed their GEDs favorably. I don’t know how many schools they went through, but it’s real now Mary. Our oldest are high school graduates, kind of. Carter is already working out how to keep Sammy from taking an extra year, we will see. I filled out the papers to home school him and Adam, or more accurately Carter did and I dropped them off at the school board. Sammy is a border lined genius and it’s the only way I can get him graduated on time. Carter realizes that, and Sam having to be 19 when he graduated would be beyond enough to irritate him.

**June 21:**

I was denied homeschooling for Sam. The school system cited his lack of school history and transcripts. Adam has been to three schools in four years. But, Sammy, god, I reckon every bit of thirty. Carter said she would talk to him about it. It’s not something I look forward to.

**June 23:**

Sammy handled it well. Maybe because Carter showed him everything. She doesn’t believe in secrets.

**July 24:**

Lindow Man

**August 22:**

Michigan Dog Man

**November 2:**

You have been gone for fourteen years, did you know that?

Death is the separation of soul from the body. The creation of a zombie is the rebinding of body and soul via necromancy. The animated body can move, speak, and even think, but it still can’t outrun physical decay. Zombies don’t last very long, and the more able they are to think, the more they suffer from the same derangement that eventually gets any spirit that been prevented from moving on. It’s a rule: if spirits can’t move on , the tug go the afterlife sooner or later drives them mad.

I guess this is all supposed to make me feel better about you being dead.

**December 25**

It is just me, Sammy, and Adam at home tonight. Carter is off to Sioux Falls to help Bobby with a demon, and Dean is headed out after a pack of werewolves. I’d go but my recent checkup has left be reeling. Alcohol beyond damaged my liver. So I drank more. Passed out. I was the one supposed to go after the werewolves, and Dean was supposed to go to Bobby. Carter already made the food, though. And Sammy tries to be like Dean, when it comes to Adam. I am home for once, and they want to enjoy it.

_Carter stold my pen, so I am forced to use Purple. Adam here, We’ve recently worked the Amityville cases. So we thought it was time to put what dad knew and what we now know together. Murphy ate this part of your journal, so… sorry._

_TRUTH ABOUT AMITYVILLE INDIAN CURSE:_

_John Underhill, Massacusettes Indian fighter, massacared Massapequans near Amityville. Sachem, Takapausha, said to haunt the area, possessing individuals for revenge. Another local legend also holds that a spirit in Lake Ronkonkoma kills a couple every year because she died while running away with a lover forbidden to her. Drowning victims in Lake Ronkonkoma often disappear for months. Bodies and matierals lost in other palces said to appear in the lake, or the other way around – people have drowned in the lake and been found in the lake and been found in other nearby bodies of water._

_CURSE OF KASKASKIA. 1735, French girl falls for Indian. They run aay together, get captured, girl’s father, Bernard, has Indian tied to a log and set adrift in the Mississippi. Before he dies, the Indian curses Bernard and the town. Bernard is killed in a duel the next year, the girl also dies. Over the next 200 years the river cuts new channels, flooding Kaskaskia until everything is washed away, includinig chuches and cemetaries. Devestating floods 1844, 1881, 1973. Many bodies lost to the river. Kaskaskia the first state capitol of Illinois, now population of 12. Correct, per carter 33 people live there now._

_SQUANDO’S CURSE, Saco River, Maine. Three hites a year will die on the river because of the drowning of his son. Squando has now been assisted to the spirit world thanks to Dean and Sam, and some Elliot._

_WISCONSIN LAKES CURSE. The last Indian who left Lake Wingra (sometimes called Dead Lake) said that the lake would die. Over the next fifty years, the lake shrunk dramatically, and as the Wisconsin State Journal noted in 1923, “has become boted for its hidden whirlpools, and for its treachery:. A winnebago indain was murdered on Maple Bluff ocerlooking Lake Mendota. He called upon the lake spirits to curse the white settlers, and kill two of them every year. From the same Journal article: “Although this story is a fable, it is nevertheless true that scarcely a year has passed in the history of Madison, but that two whites have drowned in Mednota.” Some fable, we have not made it out to look into this one yet, but it is on Castiel and Gabriel’s “Fun Vacation List”, doesn’t sound fun this white._

_CORNSTALK’S CURSE: Point Plesant, West Virginia. Since Cornstalk’s death in 1774, following disasters within 100 miles:  
11/10/1774: Cornstalk killed, curses the land  
1794:Point Plesant incorporated  
12/1907: Coal Mine collapse kills 361, Monongah, WV  
1913: Flood  
4/1930: Prison fire in Columbus, OH, kills 320  
1937: Flood  
6/1944: Tornado kills 150  
12/1967: Bridge collapse kills 46  
8/1968: Plane crash kills 35  
11/1970: Plane crash in Huntington, WV kills 75  
12/1972: 118 people killed in flood  
1/1978: Toxic spill contaminates city water supply  
4/1978: 51 construction workers killed in power plan construction  
Other coal mine disasters: Eccles, Everettville, Osage, Bartley, Benwood, Layland, Stuart_

_Mothman first seen in Point Pleasant, 100+ sightings in the year before collapse of the Silver Bridge, centered in the area about defunct West Virginia Ordance Works. Rarely seen after. Possible that later sightings were due to power of suggestions, and Mohtman was an omen figure? Where any of the 46 bridge collapse casualties saw Mothman is unknown._

_Dean says we will someday find and gank Mothman. He is full of ambition…._

 

₦=₦


	17. 1998

**1998  
January 1:**

Carter is seventeen. That is so crazy to me. She should be going to prom this year, you doing her hair or whatever, and her wearing an ridiculous dress, me intimidating her date. She is still with Bobby. I reckon demons are starting to become Bobby’s specialty as well. Dean made it home today, he had gifts for Adam and Sam. When he noticed his sister wasn’t home he tugged on the necklace around his neck.

She phoned him about a second later. Just to let him know not to worry.

**January 15:**

Carter is finally home. She followed Bobby on a trail, and brought home some information for me. It still needs to be translated, I presume Bobby didn’t do it in front of her, in case there was anything in there she didn’t need to know.

**January 24:**

Dean is nineteen. I was coming home from Vietnam right after my nineteenth birthday. Dean’s war isn’t going to end like that. Had a dream last night that I found Mary’s murderer, and knew I would have to die to take him out. That’s alright if it keeps my kids safe. All of them.

**March 19:**

Dean was gone when I came home from a hunt. Carter wouldn’t meet my eyes about it.

**March 30:**

Dean came home. He won’t tell me where he went. I believe it has to do with a girl.

**April 17:**

_Hoodoo elements:  
Graveyard dirt: must leave an offering at the disturbed grave, coins, or liquier. Mercury dime if possible – mercury a psychopomp. Soldier’s grave favored.  
Goofer dust: graveyard dirt, sulfur, salt. Anvil dust (powder of blacksmith)_

_Will keep hellhounds at bay – learned the HARD way._

_Four leaf clover: from Celtic tradition that clover was a charm against evil spirits. First three leaf bring hope, faith love. Fourth brings luck. Also a quincunx.  
Rattlesnake skin, rattle, or rattlesnake salt: chopped up whole snake put in jar of salt, left for a period of time (at least a week). Dried snake parts discared, remaining salt has magical potency._

_Coins: mercury dime because of mythical associations. Mercury considered the first metal in alchemy. Messenger god – i.e., go between, mediator. In voodoo, see Legba. Mercury also god of magicians, derived from Hermes. Statues of Hermes and Mercury set at crossroads._

_Fluids: blood, menstral fluid, urine, saliva, semen  
Hair: self if protective charm, intended focus if love or hex  
John The Conquerer root – form of morning glory; represents power of mythical African trickster sold into slavery._

_Rabbits foot: left hind especially. Rabbit should be taken in a cemetery if possible. Lucky because of association with hare as witches’ familiar. The Winchesters DO NOT like rabbit feet, and hope we never ever find another one again… Thank you very much._

_Conjure bag, mojo hand, nation sack, color of fabric: contents of bag create different effects. Love, power, sex, luck, fertility._

_Crossing marks: laid down in chalk, salt, crossroads dirt. Formula varies, but marks usually laid down in cross pattern – quincunx – with circle around it. Wavy lines symbolically represent snakes also used. Patterns of small stones or marks made with the finger or a stick work when no crossing powder. Bad luck for the person the charm is intended for – sometimes also for whoever else crosses it. Leftover elements should be discarded at a crossroads if possible._ -Dean

**May 2:**

Sammy is fifteen today. He will start high school this fall. Next spring he will have his driver’s license. Can’t wait to have the boys fighting over the Impala. Carter already knows what her ride is. And Adam, well he isn’t big enough to do anything behind the wheel. It’s a little easier with Sammy lately. He seems more committed. Maybe that because he’s able to have more control over being in school. Having a friend here and there that isn’t your two older siblings. I try not to tell him what I really think\k, which is that he shirking sometimes. Winchesters don’t QUIT. I don’t think he’s quitting, but he gets stubborn, and then he won’t listen to anything I say. He and Dean don’t get along quite as good as they used to. But Carter, he loves the ground she walks on. Practically worships her. Could be Sammy is tired of being Dean’s little brother, he often pushes Adam into Dean’s way, knowing Dean will be drawn into playing with Adam. He also doesn’t like that Dean always takes the lead. I don’t think it’s like that when Carter and Sam are here with just Adam. 

I am thinking about sending Sammy on his first solo. I should look around for something simple like I did for Dean. Sam could handle ghouls but he is not his sister. Don’t know why I am so worried, Sammy has always been capable when push comes to stove.

**May 3:**

Carter lost her temper tonight, and did so in much the same way I imagine you would have. Sammy refused to go on the hunt. I got loud, Adam got scared. Carter threw a bottle of Johnny Walker Red at my head, and told Sam to “sit the fuck down.” 

Once we were both at the table, Dean a step behind her and Adam in bed, she lowered her voice. “Listen here, Sammy your going on a hunt, solo. Ok, pick your poison you can do whatever, happy. And dad,” She says my name like poison, you know that? “You need to prepare to go to Adam’s play, you promised so Dean is going for the Revenant in Tuscarora.” 

She left no room for argument.

 

Sam found his hunt. Scoped it out himself. He is going after a werewolf we caught the trail of. Carter is driving him, but not paying him any help until he ask for it. 

Found this interesting so I thought I would copy it down:

Sneeze on Monday, sneeze for danger. Sneeze on Tuesday, kiss a stranger. Sneeze on Wednesday, sneeze for a letter. Sneeze on Thursday, something better. Sneeze on Friday, sneeze for woe. Sneeze on Saturday, a journey to go. Sneeze on Sunday, your safety seek – for Satan will have you the rest of the week. 

Walking under ladders: from Egyptians. Leaned ladders on tomb walls so deceased could climb them, and spirits gathered in the triangle formed by the ladder, wall and floor.

Chinese and Japanese heart attack rates spike every month on the fourth. Superstition because words for “four” and “death” are homophones in both languages.

Knock on wood: from Druidic tradition on tapping on trees to ask resident spirits to come out. 

**May 8:**

Adam is getting to be a big kid! He is eight today. Carter is missing his birthday because she is out with Sam. I got a call from them letting me know Sam killed the werewolf on his own, but Carter did the clean up. Before they reached him, he managed to change three other people. Once he was dead, they tested the theory of the cure, only to discover that it was not true. 

Carter killed the remaining three and they stayed last night to make sure there were no others they had missed. 

Dean and I decided to take Adam bow hunting. Adam was so excited. He hit his target every time. I don’t know how I got such marksmen for children, but damn, Mary they are all talented in their own ways.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twentieth anniversary. China. Mary and I never had china. we barely had corningware. Twenty: four fives. Number of digits on the human body.

Dean and Carter are out on a small hunt. 

I have made another mistake. I met a woman, and she’s pregnant now. I left instructions with what to do if she didn’t want to keep the baby. Woman I met in Boston. I know of an excellent Abbey that would keep eyes on the little babe until it was a safe time for it to join us.

**July 11:**

Apparently Dean made a mistake about three years ago, a little boy named Ben. I knew he was sneaking off to see a girl. Said girl, Lisa Braden brought Ben to Carter, who had used her real name at the motel. Not many Winchester’s in that neck of the woods with the name Carter that drive an Impala. Ben is three, and he misses his mother very much. I told him I was his father. He cowered behind Carter. Adam and Sam are already smitten with him. 

The Fool, The Magician, The High Priestess, The Empress, The Emperor, The Hierophant, The Lovers, The Chariot, Strength, The Hermit, Wheel of Fortune, Justice, The Hanged Man, Death, Temperance, The Devil, The Tower, The Star, The Moon, The Sun, Judgement, The World. Tarot as story. The Fool (whoever is asking for the reading) must learn certain lessons. Order and connections between the other cards tell the Fool’s story.

Carter took me to have my cards read. She said it would help me understand how they work. She has her own deck. She seems to understand her fate, she has been having dreams about a man again. The man calls himself “The Light” and is apparently her future. I wonder if this has anything to do with the demons and other things interested in Sam. 

The cards work, or so it seemed. I will die, for a son. I wonder which one. I have four now.

**August 4:**

Back from Orlando with Sammy, this was his second hunt. 

Dean gave me some shuck and jive about how he blazed through five states while we were gone. 

Carter is tight lipped about it. 

Reckon this has to do with his disappearing act in March.

**September 14:**

Banshee Bear

**October 31:**

Born on Halloween and said to convey gift of speaking to the dead:

1424 – Wladisloaus III  
1632 – Jan Vermeer (possibly baptism)  
1705 – Clement XIV  
1795 – John Keats  
1835 – Adolf von Bayer  
1887 – Chiang Kai-Shek  
1892 – Alexander Alekhine  
1896 – Ethel Waters  
1902 – Abraham Wald  
1912 – Dale Evans  
1918 – Ian Stevenson  
1922 – Norodom Sihanouk  
1930 – Michael Collins  
1931 – Dan Rather  
1950 – Jane Pauley

Died on Halloween:

1448 – John Vlll Palaeologus  
1723 - Cosimo de’ Medici  
1883 – Swami Dayananda Saraswati  
1926 – Harry Houdini  
1984 – Indira Gandhi  
1987 – Samuel Campbell (Mary’s father – this night is very blurry)

Events:

1517 – Luther nails up 95 thesis  
1982 – Adventures of Sherlock Holmes published  
1941 – Mount Rushmore completed  
Conon Doyle – History of Spiritualisim, 1926. Eusapia Palladino, Mina Crandon. FRAUDS.

**November 2:**

Mary you died fifteen years ago. I feel like I’m getting closer. Every year I learn a little more. Every supernatural being I put away teaches me something, every hunter I talk to fills in another gap.

**December 12:**

Sammy has a slight obsession with murders, especially serial murders. He found the following information, and I thought it was interesting enough to include in this journal, who knows maybe there is a connection between murders that have no rhyme/reason/perp and demons… Carter seemed pleased that I was letting Sammy educate me on something. How strange, the way she glares at me, yet seeks my approval. Unsolved serial murders:

1884-85….. Austin; Texas-servant girls  
1888….. Jack the Ripper, probably Springheel  
1918-19….. Axeman of New Orleans – claimed to be a demon in his letters  
1935-38….. Cleveland Torso Killer (Sammy thinks he was actually active from the 20s-50s)  
1946….. Texarkana, Phantom Killer  
1968-84….. Capitol City murders, Madison, WI  
1964-69….. Zodiac killer, California (Sammy thinks he was active 1963-71)  
1971-76….. Alphabet Killer, upstate NY  
1975-90….. Area if New Haven, CT – young women only  
1976-77….. Oakland County, MI. child killer  
1976-86….. Coastal California – Linked to East Area Rapist in Oakleaf  
1979-86….. Night Stalker, California  
1980s….. Southside Slayer, Los Angeles  
1982….. Green River Killer

 

Civdad Juarez – hundreds(?) of young women

**December 25:**

Carter, Dean, Sam, Adam, and Ben are together. I am in Las Vegas. Drinking took priority. Sorry Mary

**December 28:**

Howling of Dogs: A death omen from Egyptins? Jackal-headed Anubis conducted souls to the afterlife. Mesomericana and Native American, also African belief that dogs led spirits to the underworld. Persians kept dogs by their deathbeds.

 

₦=₦


	18. 1999

**1999  
January 1:**

My only daughter is eighteen; she spent her birthday out on the town with some boy she just met. Reminds me of Dean. Carter doesn’t get attached, and if she does, well, the unlucky son of a bitch will just have to become a Winchester.

She looks more like you every single day. She had her hair curled up, and a blue summer dress on, with tights and a scarf. Dean gave the boy she was going out with a talking to like you’d never heard. Even ended it with have her home by midnight, boy. I guess that was my job. But I was in the middle of research, and couldn’t be bothered. She even introduced the fella to us. Some kid, played football or something. The way Dean was looking at him, I wonder if we hadn’t been in this town before.Figured I would try to put together some sort of Revenant lore, there is no clear or concise book about it. The European sources say revenants including vampires can be destroyed by:

Staking  
Burning corpse  
Dismemberment  
Decapitation  
Exorcism

**January 2:**

Carter was home by midnight. Her and Dean both headed out after that, not sure where either one of them went, but this morning when I woke up breakfast was done, and there were supplies enough to last the next two weeks. Which is how long I think this hunt will take. Trailing a Revenant by the way. They think they are clever, but I know the signs. Dean probably picks a good match, then sets up the transaction. Carter is too damn pretty to find her own johns. Bless them, though, for doing what I can’t.

**January 24:**

Dean turned 20 today. He and Carter are in Ohio somewhere, they have not checked in a couple days, tracking a possible poltergeist. He’s supposed to call every night. At least one of them is. Mission discipline is critical.

**February 14:**

I have a second daughter, she is named Elliott.

The others do not know yet, I am not sure how to tell them.

I promised Carter no more children.

I want to give the child some time to learn before we go after her. 

**March 21:**

Dighton Rock, Mass

Saw it yesterday looks like prehistoric version of bathroom grafeti to me, but the symbols must mean something. Indian? Viking? Theories about Portugese explorer Miguel Cortereal, 1511? Other Megaliths in New England. The Vikings were here. Everyone knows it. What might they have brought? What might they have left behind? Their ruins can’t all be hoaxes, and Viking ruins were divine. Odin earned them by hanging on his tree. 

**May 2:**

_Corpus Hermeticum_

_… “The Secret Sermon On the Mountain” …_

Sammy is sixteen today. God knows he’s got plenty of torment. Now he’s got a drivers license too. Doesn’t make much difference. He has been able to drive since he was like nine. Carter gave him a very stiff talking to about riding in cars with pretty girls. Not that she needed too, he is so different from Carter and Dean – he’d rather be in a library then making out.

**May 8:**

Another year, damn. Adam is nine. Dean is in Utah somewhere. Carter is in Nevada. The problem with training your children to be hunters is they disappear on you. I am headed out, now, to Sioux Falls. Sammy is in charge until I get back. Every time I leave Ben cries, tossing his little arms up in the air, and whimpering. Like I would want to take him anywhere with me.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twenty-first wedding anniversary. Mary, I have been doing this for almost sixteen years, and sometimes I feel like I’m not any closer to an answer than I was when I watched the house burn in 1983. What am I doing? I’ve thrown everything away for this, to join an underground tribe of hunters and spend my nights watching exorcisms and killing spirits… what have I done to our children? They don’t have friends, not the way I did. I lived in the same town the whole time I was growing up. Now they are almost grown, and they’ve seen very back road and abandoned farmhouse in the country, but they don’t have roots. They are dangerously codependent on each other. We’ve never been back to Lawrence. I won’t do that to me or them.

Wonder how many exorcisms I’ve seen. Maybe fifty, sixty? How many of them were real demons? How many were some other kind of prankster spirit? Anything can call itself a demon. I’ve smelled the sulfur though, and I’ve seen the holy water and the Devil’s traps work. The whole think might be easier if demons were not so cagey about who the Big Guy down there is. If they’ve never seen him, and most of them don’t believe he even exist, then he, there are no fallen angels ruling over hell. So no angels. Period. And then what are demons? And what is hell? They (creatures that say they’re demons) say it exist. 

**May 21:**

Ben is four. Mary we have a grandchild. He looks just like Dean, I cannot believe how much he acts like our little Dean did at four. He is rambunctious, and ready to play at all times of day. I only know his birthday because of the note Lisa had given Carter when she left Ben.

**August 14:**

News from Elliott. Her mother died in a house fire. Elliott was the only survivor. She is currently in the care of several sisters. Bobby found the convent and requested that they hold on to Elliott until I had some family affairs sorted. I owe Bobby quite a bit for that. He even left contact information for me at the orphanage, so if I come around they will know I am Elliott’s father. 

**November 2:**

You’ve been dead for sixteen years. The century is ending, by popular reckoning. Wonder whats waiting on the other side. 

 

₦=₦


	19. 2000

**2000  
January 1:**

Y2K didn’t end the world. New Year’s Eve almost did Dean and Carter in, though. They are upstairs, immobile, curled up in bed together. I don’t feel good myself. Adam and Sam are around somewhere. I can hear them in the kitchen maybe, doing homework.

Carter is 19. Dean will be 21 soon. Where did the time go?

I think I’ve done right by Carter. Her eyes still hold resentment, but in most company she is a lady, she’s a damn smart woman, and a mother to her younger brothers, and did I mention she is loyal to a fault. I don’t question if it is to me or Dean anymore, I don’t want the answer. 

**January 17:**

Plants and herbs used in contacting dark spirits: acacia, devil pod, mullein, valerian.  
Eucalyptus, salt, garlic, rosemary, bay leaves for protection.  
Mint, hyssop, rue, sage, yarrow for breaking spells or magical influence.

**January 24:**

Dean is twenty-one today. I’d buy him a beer if I thought it would be something new. It wouldn’t I know all about him and Carter drinking every chance they got. Sammy and Adam don’t thank god. He’s old enough to buy their beer and his own guns now. I tried to raise him right, and looks like I did. He’s a scam artist, ladies man, and an absolutely loyal son. He knows what’s right and what’s wrong, he doesn’t hesitate to act when he knows he needs to. I’m proud of him, and Carter, I’ll gush more about her when she is twenty one. Now that he is hunting on his own and I don’t see as much of him as I did, I miss him and I know he is out there. When I call him in on a job he’s right there every time. I don’t have to do it often because I know I have Carter. Dean hunts with Rufus sometimes or Bobby. I’ve spent the last sixteen years worried about screwing Dean up, maybe now I can relax about it and forget.

**February 5:**

_Non Timebo Hala  
“I will fear no evil.”_

**February 14:**

Today Elliott is one year old. I have yet to touch her, but I have seen her. She has blonde curls.

**February 28:**

Herbs, continued

**April 30:**

Revenants, continued

**May 2:**

Sammy is seventeen today. Dean came home. Carter made a huge dinner. I am going to guess that Sammy is the only sophomore in the United States who has read “Clavicula Solomonis” and made parts of it work. Bought him a new computer. He’s a zealot about having a Macintosh. Also he’s a walking dictionary of occult and esoteric. There’s a lot of his mother in him, and for that I am thankful. God, I wish he had some way of knowing that other than me telling him.

Dean brought Sammy some books that he wanted, whenever Dean or Carter go on a hunt, Sam sends them with his wish list, and they see if they can round up anything on it. Carter gave Sammy a talisman from New Orleans, it wards off evil, apparently. I know this but he does not, the last two hunts his siblings have went on were after people, other hunters, who were hunting Sam. There is blood on all our hands in an effort to protect Sam. Adam will one day have blood on his hands.

**May 8:**

Adam is ten! And I took him on his first hunt. He is a strange combination of Sammy and Carter. He is calm and sure of himself like Carter, but calculating like Sam. I have raised some fine hunters. He handled salt and burn like it was nothing, even logged hours of digging.

Carter and Dean got him a gun.

**May 15:**

Barrett on a spiritual book.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twenty-second wedding anniversary Mary. Every year the more I learn about communicating with the dead, the harder it gets not to talk to you. I dream about it. I stop myself at least once a week from doffing out a ritual and bringing you to me, even it is only for a few minutes. Then what happened with Jim stops me. I don’t think I could stand to see that happen again, or let the kids. You’re alive to me because I think of nothing but avenging you. That’s the way it has to be.

**May 21:**

Ben is five today, and starting kindergarten.

**June 3:**

Runes and elements

_Pyromancy – fire  
Aeromancy – air, wind  
Aquamancy – language of running water  
Cartomancy – tarot (Carter plays with these more than anyone I know)  
Hantuspication – entrails  
Augury – birdsong (Lucas can identify birds like no one else)  
Oneiromancy – dreams  
John Gaule’s Mysmantia,1652, mentions others. Carter can copy those down, I ain’t in the mood._ \- Adam

**June 4:**

Carter is a _witch_. I can feel it. But she is not a monster. Right? Maybe not all creatures are naturally evil. I don’t know anymore. Once upon a time I knew right from wrong. I would have balked at the thought of killing an entire family of anything. Now we take out werewolves with the blink of an eye. Carter has a natural hum that seems to never leave her body. When she is moving, it’s like an intricate dance, like nature moves around her or in accord with her. I can’t tell.

**August 26:**

We went on a large family hunt. A rather large pack of werewolves. Adam was just out of reach, and was falling, he was going to literally fall into the mouths of beast. I don’t know what Carter did. She was staring at him, and said something, then he was beside her, his arms tight around her middle. Dean and Sam both hugged her like it was the best thing in the world.

Sammy’s dreams are back.

Dean stays gone a little longer every time.

Carter is a witch.

**October 11:**

EVP: can record voices of the dead sometimes – Dean made a device that picks it up. Gave one to me, Carter, Sammy, and Adam. Ben still trails around like he’s confused sometimes. 

**November 2:**

Mary, you have been dead for seventeen years. I know you’re watching, time doesn’t pass in heaven? Or hell? Who knows any more. 

**December 8:**

Carter is on a hunt with Bobby. She saved his and Rufus’ bacon. She’s getting control of her natural powers. Bobby has never seen a witch like her. He and I agreed, we gave Carter a pendant that keeps her powers in check.

Names for Afterlife

 

₦=₦


	20. 2001

**  
2001  
January 1:**

Carter is twenty. She is breath-takingly beautiful. She looks so much like you Mary. I can’t stand it.

**January 9:**

Dean and Carter are headed to Arkansas, on a hunt for Bobby. They spared me the details.

**January 24:**

Happy twenty-second birthday Dean. Hope you like Arkansas.

**February 8:**

Carter and Dean are home from their hunt. 

**February 14:**

Elliott is two years old today. I don’t know if I will ever actually meet her. I stop by the Abby and watch her sometimes. I owe Bobby, both he and Rufus check on her frequently.

**March 18:**

Clown/Jester

**May 2:**

Sammy is eighteen. Surprised he didn’t take off at midnight. I believe Carter convinced him to stay around to finish his school. He hunts when I need him too, but he is not committed like Dean or Carter. Dean’s never known any other way to live, or if he has he doesn’t act like it. Carter does what Dean does, they are so amazingly close even with their age difference. Dean is playing the role he was born to play… just like beautiful Carter. Sammy is the middle child now. He was the younger brother for so long, he had big shoes to fill. He has one more year of school then I am drafting him into full time hunting. Pulling Carter out to raise Ben. She’s a hell of a teacher. I can tell Sammy his role until I am blue in the face and we are ready to kill one another, it does no good. Sometimes you learn better by doing, according to my daughter. 

I have given Sammy more slack and wiggled room than Dean, Carter or Adam. Ben will have even less leeway than his father did. Sammy I suppose is my spoiled child, but he doesn’t see it that way. He needed it. Dean never even thought about college. We used to joke about it once in a while. But Sammy still believes he can have a normal life, but they’re both more useful to the world as hunters. Carter is useful as a teacher of the next generations. Lawyers? Dentist? 

Sammy’s convinced himself that smart kids have to go to college. Part of my job, and now Carter’s because I have recruited her, is to convince him that smart kids don’t have to go to college. And I gotta hand it to him on the brains front, there is nothing he can’t find on the computer. I still dig around in actual books, libraries and newspapers. For my Sammy it’s all key strokes and search words. He’s done a good job hiding our trail on the credit cards. he’s teaching Carter now. Like he knows someday he will leave.

**May 4:**

Co ordinance 

**May 8:**

Adam is eleven. My youngest son. He is so smart. I cannot wait to see how he does in fifth grade. Adam let me know that once Sammy graduates if we need to hit the road again we can. He doesn’t mind bouncing around. Adam is honestly the most well adjusted child I have ever met.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twenty-third anniversary. Now the new century is really here. And I still on the hunt. Getting closer? Bobby threw me a curveball the other day, and he’s taken to asking for Carter if he needs a research partner or someone to take out werewolves with.

Admitting that demons exist might not be the same as believing in demons – esp. since demons don’t even believe. Even if they aren’t demons, if they think they are – if they’re some kind of spirit that believes itself a demon – then they’re going to act like demons are supposed to act. 

In other words, even if demons aren’t real, as long as there are malevolent spirits that think they are demons, and act like demons they’ll need to be fought like demons, kind of a spin on the thought form created form belief…. Sounds too complicated for me. Carter and Sam seemed to understand it right away. Either there are demons or there aren’t, at least to me.

Another Seal of Solomon:

**May 21:**

Ben is six. I have heard of a hunt that only comes around this time of year. Something next year if Ben is old enough and mature enough I am going to take him on. I hope that Ben understands how important a part he is going to play in this world.

**June 20:**

John Dee

**July 18:**

Enoch is one of the Juedo-Christian tradition crazy magnets. Supposedly taken up into the heavens when he was 365…

 

Shaken. 

Eleven is the number of sin, between the perfection of ten – digits on the fingers – and the holiness of twelve – number of zodiacs, apostles, hours in the day and night… I can’t believe that a handful of religious nuts with box cutters could do something like this. There must be more too it. Have been on the phone with every hunter I know today. And we all agree, everyone is talking demons, nobody has any details but nobody things that what’s on the surface is the actual answer. I’m going to New York to look around, meeting Rufus and Bobby there. Dean is in Texas, Carter is at home. Sammy is getting ready for his first round of senior test. Adam is enjoying the fifth grade and has a movie night on Friday. Ben is attached to Sammy’s hip most of the time. Dean hasn’t formed a bond with his own son yet.

**September 15:**

God, the spirits in Shanksville.

The story coming out is BULL.

I am looking for symbols like these:

**November 2:**

Eighteen years. Carter is talking about leaving. She wants to do something on her own.

**December 19:**

Caught Carter singing today, it broke my heart. She and Dean were around the table, her hair thrown up in a bun, sitting on the table, Dean had his back against her legs – Dean was strumming on the guitar.

They were singing to Sammy and Adam. I didn’t even say goodbye. I left my children, I have work today.

**Boyd Sanatorium**

**₦=₦**


	21. 2002

**2002  
January 1:**

I don’t know how Dean talked his sister out of leaving, but he did. We celebrated her twenty-first birthday by drinking. Me, her, Dean, and Sammy. All on the front porch of the house we’ve kept in California for Sammy to go to school.

**January 24:**

Dean turns twenty-three today. It’s a good age, you're starting to not be a kid anymore, and still young enough that you feel invincible. Forty-eight doesn’t feel like that at all.

I thought, once upon a time, Dean might be married by now and preparing to have a family of his own. Well he has Ben, but at current Ben doesn’t know Dean is his dad. He has picked up calling Carter “momma” just like Adam does. Even Sam does it sometimes.

God, Mary, I miss you.

**February 2:**

Demon’s alley

**February 14:**

Elliott is three today. I am not sure too much about her. 

I understand that she is gifted, but struggles with nightmares. 

**March 3:**

Leonardo, NJ

 **March 5** :

Carter took a twelve hour round trip today, not sure where she went or why. She doesn’t share with me anymore. 

**March 8:**

Sam told us he is leaving, going to Stanford, he wants to be a lawyer. I told him that if he goes, he better stay gone. I think Dean would have taken a swing at him if I hadn’t kept my cool. 

Carter tried to convince him otherwise, in the end she opened the door for him. They shared a look, and it was like a silent victory. 

Trying to work out what to do about this. We can’t tolerate any of us quitting. We’re better together, as a team. I’ve protected Sammy his whole life, Dean and Carter have protected him too. Could be I was too easy on him. I vow to not make that mistake with Adam or Ben. 

Dean and Carter responded to discipline because they believed in the mission. I thought that by giving Sammy more room, I’d let him find his own way to dedication like Dean’s. or Carter’s. doesn’t look like that worked out for me. now he’s a straight-A student, computer whiz… I think he’s gone a little soft, how many tight spots have we been in since he was a baby? And now he’s going to college? He can go to hell, is where he can go.

**March 29:**

Got a call from Missouri, Stull Church was torn down my persons unknown. The building was rickety as hell, but still I can’t help but wonder if it’s related somehow… but if it is, why now?  
There is nothing about the date, nothing else going on in the area that I’ve heard about. Its spirits will still be there, though. They don’t care about the building. Whatever goes up in the church's place is going to have bad atmosphere. Wonder if the foundation was torn out, and what might be in there. 

**April 1:**

Woke up to find Carter and young Ben gone. A note about some bogus hunt a couple states away. She only remained around as long as she did for Sammy. Adam is on his own this week. Dean is in Canada.

**April 10:**

Daeva

**May 2:**

Sammy is nineteen today. He has some decisions to make.

**May 8:**

Adam is twelve today. He hunts with me mostly. Carter has been gone over a month. Dean is starting to worry about Ben and her. I stated if she wanted her space she got it, except her phone isn’t working. 

**May 13:**

Carter is home, we talked, and she was attacked by a demon. Lucy for her Ben at almost seven memorized the hell out of that easy exorcism, and it worked. Saved both their lives.

**May 17:**

This would have been twenty-four years, Mary. Funny how after twenty years there a five- or ten-year gap between special gift years. What would I have gotten you, Mary? A clock? For twenty four hours in a day? A Tanakh? Which as twenty four books? A piece of twenty four karat pure gold jewelry? Gold doesn’t come until fifty years, though. Getting a little too drunk to keep coming up with ideas. 

**May 21:**

Ben is seven. Today I loaded him, Carter, and Adam into the car. Sold the house. Sammy isn’t here anymore to hold us to the place. Dean behind the wheel, and me on the bike. I don’t know where we are going, but I am glad to be on the road.

That hunt I talked about last year I am going to take him on. Seems like now is a perfect time to start his education. Carter and Dean had to be fast tracked, and Adam is brilliant in the field.

**May 29:**

I made a mistake. The look on Carter’s face said it all.

Ben is lucky to be alive, my witch daughter saved him. 

Yea, Mary, no more denying what Carter is. I don’t know if you were a witch or not, I would like to think that maybe had you been a witch you would still be alive. Maybe not, who knows?  
The hunt I mentioned on Ben’s birthday was a witch who only came out once a year for about three weeks to eat. Children. Preferably little boys, between seven and nine. Ben was the perfect age, and God, Mary, he was so prepared and ready – even had his own to go bag with his crossbow ready, I guess that’s another thing Dean and Carter taught him.

He was going to die. There Carter was holding Ben in her arms, his ears pouring blood, his eyes. I remember watching, in silence, with fear on my face. Dean jerked the pendant that controls Carter’s powers from her neck and chucked it into the fire. Blue flames licked at the pendant, and then Adam found a counter spell.

It was Carter who had the power to reverse it. Or at least cap it. No more death for Ben, but the problem is he is now DEAF. In both ears, can’t hear a thing. I can’t bare to look at them, my children, and my grandson, so completely loyal and trusting in me… and I let them all down.

How is Ben going to be a hunter if he can’t hear? 

I made a mistake and because of it, Ben is dead weight.

**June 13:**

Sam graduated, he didn’t go to the ceremony. I think he is still carrying a grudge. He lived out of the house since his announcement and I only knew about the date because Carter remembers everything she reads. She knows where and who he is staying with. They talk. He doesn’t know she left too. 

What do you want me to do, Sammy? Should we have stayed in Lawrence while whatever killed your mother came back for you? Should we have sat around fat, dumb and happy even though war had been declared? How long would we have lasted that way?

Noticed that Dean and Carter are teaching Adam and Ben sign language. I don’t know where Sammy is, and I can’t stand the thought of Ben. I refused to learn the stupid hand symbols. I want to tell you, Mary, which I have buried myself in lore, but I haven’t. I have no courage to fix Ben, to hear what he might think about me, from his own lips. Carter has to remind him when he is too loud, or not loud enough. He speaks as he signs. Carter mentioned it was good. 

The first thing Ben signed fluidly made all the other children cry. I believe if I understood what I read (I might have learned sign language and just not mentioned it) Ben was asking for Sammy.

Carter took my beer away from me, I slapped her hard enough she skidded on the floor. Dean patched her nose up. Our daughter continues to look at me like I’ve personally destroyed her. 

Maybe I have. Maybe I have ruined Carter to the point that no one will ever see her genuine smile or the way her eyes light up when she is surprised. She is so much like you, Mary, I think   
I’ve worked hard to destroy every single part of her that reminds me of you.

**July 30:**

Now in Hibbing County, Minnesota. This county has more missing persons per capita than anywhere else in the state. Very few cases have been solved. There are people here who speak of the “phantom attacker”. Is Hibbing a possible hunting ground? Why are there so many missing? Some of them date back generations. Could it be a spring heel jack?

**August 31:**

Carter informed me that Sam has officially left for Palo Alto. I reminded her to remind him that if he went it was permanent. Carter is still not very forth coming with information. Dean and Carter shared the bed last night, with Ben and Adam. They were all snuggled together, sobbing for their missing piece. I wish, Mary, that I could tell you how much I adore our children and that they have brought me peace in the years since you passed away… but sometimes I think they have too much of you in them. I caught Carter telling the younger ones that some monsters are good, and need not be destroyed.

**November 2:**

You have been dead for nineteen years. I haven’t kept the family together Mary. I am sorry. Sam is gone because he is head strong and because I couldn’t make him understand how important this is to all of us. 

Now Dean tells me he has cut off all contact with his brother, Carter as well, and the younger two. It is killing me, I can’t stand the thought of my kids being separated. Sammy has always relied on Dean and Carter. It’s one thing for me to take a stand, I’m the father I have to lay down the law for the family. 

Maybe that is the marine in me talking, and maybe it was not the right thing to do all the time, but it’s gotten us this far. Now I’m questioning myself. Families stick together. 

 

₦=₦


	22. 2003

**2003  
January 1:**

Carter is 22, Jesus she is a looker. Her hair has some red in it where yours was completely blonde, and she is deadly. We went out on a hunt together, just for her birthday. The pair of us took out an entire coven of witches. I am so undeniably proud of her, the way she holds herself and how well she is at dispatching monsters. She spends most of her time managing Adam and Ben, we are on the road again, with no home base. I have an old red Chevy truck I follow the Impala and the Bonneville in. 

**January 24:**

Dean turns twenty four today. I was twenty four when we got married Mary. Sorry, kid. Every boy has to cut the apron strings sometime, and for you it’s not going to be until we kill off a supernatural gentility that seriously needs killing. Then we’ll all be free of your ghost Mary. We'll be able to live normal lives. But maybe not. Maybe we’ve been hunters too long now.  


I think I ruined Dean and Carter. I really do. Tonight they went with me to a bar. Leaving Adam to care for Ben. I realized that they both considered it completely normal. I can’t tell you how fiercely Carter warned Adam to not open the door. She had him salt the door frame and window frames after we left. 

Adam is devout if only to his sister. Much like Carter’s loyalty has never been with me, I understand that now. Carter is here for Dean, first and foremost. Then she is here for Adam and Ben. I know she prefers the company of Sammy to me, but she will not openly admit it.

Neither have any normal relationships with people, we blow through a town and they sleep in a couple beds that aren’t there’s, then we leave again. They prefer each other’s company and almost ignored me completely at the bar. I realized tonight that Dean and Carter don’t need me, probably have not needed me since they were teenagers. 

**February 14:**

Today was Elliott’s fourth birthday.

Bobby spent it with her, I owe him more than he will ever know.

He took her to Central Park.

**March 20:**

Rumors of wars

**May 2:**

Sammy is twenty today. He is in California. Dean and I are packing up to get the hell out go Athens, Ohio. Carter, Adam and Ben are in Paducah, Kentucky. Athens is free of several haunted sorority houses this morning! I heard dean talking about Sam on the phone earlier, but he didn’t say anything about the conversation to me. I imagine he was talking to Carter. She and Sam write, I believe, in newspapers, the code is off to me, but. Dean has been in a mood of sorts. Usually after a hunt he is on fire. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was because of a girl, but we’ve only been here a couple of weeks. It’s not like Dean to fall hard for a girl that fast. He was spending a lot of time with a reporter, thinks he was a reporter. A looker. Could be anything though. Hard to tell how he is reacting with Sam going AWOL. Dean’s like me. He doesn’t talk. We don’t talk. We act.

**May 17:**

This would have been our twenty-fifth wedding anniversary. That’s silver. Associated with the moon in alchemy – maybe that’s why silver bullets that out werewolves.

**May 21:**

Ben is eight today. He reminds me of both Adam and Dean. He is more of an action oriented little boy. I took him to practice with Carter’s old crossbow today.

**June 13:**

Dean heard about a succubus in Brooklyn from Richie. He lit out after it like he bore it a personal grudge. I’m getting more and more sure he’s in some sort of girl trouble in Ohio. Carter giggled and said, “Any female spirit and demon in North America is going to suffer for that girl's’ mistake.” I hate to agree with her, I hope he keeps his head.

**July 30:**

US Route 666 has been renamed to 491, and a Navajo medicine man even blessed it. No word from Carter or Dean in two weeks. They suck. Last I heard they were somewhere in the Everglades dealing with a Rugaru.

**October 9:**

Poltergeist in Kittanning, Pennsylvania. All the Winchesters together except Sam.

**October 27:**

Reading about Samhain.

**November 2:**

Mary you have been dead for twenty years. Spent the anniversary at the Winchester Mystery House (everyone except Sam). After some looking around I found a distant family connection. Some great-great-uncle parallel decent. Wrote my notes on a separate sheet, will attach. 

 

₦=₦


	23. 2004

**2004  
January 1:**

Carter is twenty-three today, irritating brat. I am not with her, Adam or Ben. I have been to Palo Alto to check on Sam, as well as the Abbey to check on Elliott. Elliott looks like Carter. To a degree. She has similar soft blonde hair, and shimmering eyes. Where Carter has your facial structure, Elliott looks more like Adam. The Nuns assure me she is in the best care. I explained what I was to them, they understand what a hunter is, most members of the Catholic faith know of the underground tribe that exorcises demons for them. They also know that right now it’s not safe. 

**January 24:**

Dean is twenty-five today. There was a report on CNN this morning about a vampire, strigoi, dug up and its heart burned, in Romania less than a month ago.

I have thought very frequently lately about my mistakes, about all the missteps along the way. I truly don’t know how to handle life if I do not have a bottle in my hand.

Mary, what have I become?

The very monster I hunt.

**February 14:**

Elliot is five today and starting kindergarten at the Abbey, the sisters seem to be fine with her staying until this last mission is over.

Carter is going to kill me when I bring Elliott home, which is the main reason I have yet to mention her to her nephew and older siblings.

**February 18:**

Serious bad mojo from a houngan in New Iberia. Get bad vinegar, beef gall, filet gumbo with red pepper, and put names written across each other in bottles. Shake the bottle for nine mornings and talk and tell it what you want it to do. To kill the victim, turn it upside down and beery it breast-deep, and he will die.

**March 9:**

All my kids save Sammy and Elliott are at Bobby’s.

**April 2:**

Black Angel, Iowa City. Oakland Cemetery. Pregnant woman miscarry, touching can be fatal, walking under wings.

**May 2:**

Sammy is twenty one years old today. May he go and get hammered like the college student that he is. Was there again last week to keep an eye on him, and he has a new girlfriend, real pretty blonde.

**May 8:**

Adam is 13, and looks more like Sam every day. I swear God is mocking me. First with Carter being your twin, in every sense of the word and then my third son looking every bit like my second son.

**May 12:**

_Ecprcisims Witnessed 2002-2004_

**May 17:**

This would have been our 26th wedding anniversary. Two days ago, like some sort of awful early present, I got a call from Bobby. It was a long conversation and by the end of it, I was a confirmed believer in demons, because after twenty-one years we might have had a real lead on what happened to Mary. All the things I have seen, and I wrote them off to other things. 

Goddammit. 

I should have been listening all this time. How much closer would I be? Years of lost time to make up for. For a while I thought it was Lilith, but I know better now. 

I have not told my children yet, our children Mary. The three that started this journey, they do not know. Can’t take the chance that Dean would try something he’s not ready to do. Can’t trust Carter to not go all witch level one thousand on the demon. I’ve lost you, Mary, and Sam. I won’t lose anyone else. 

**May 21:**

Ben is nine. 

**October 3:**

Sibly

**November 2:**

You have been dead for twenty-one years. At last I’m getting closer. If it was a demon that killed you, and I think it was, I’m going to nail down which one. Then I’m going to make it suffer. 

**November 23:**

Still tracking the Colt. It’s out there somewhere. Word is that a hunter has it, but nobody I know will say who. Someone is hiding it. Why? If I had it, all I’d need is one bullet. A gun that can kill anything… one bullet, for the demon that killed you, Mary. Then I could put down my guns, and rest.

**December 7:,\**

Demons that use fire, or are under fire symbols:  
 _See the back of the journal..._

**December 31:**

_Invocation, from Goetiia._

 

₦=₦


	24. 2005 - part one

**2005  
January 1:**

Carter is twenty four.

I’m fifty years old, and you have been dead for twenty-two of those years. I only knew you for seven. Every year those two numbers grow further apart. Because only one of them can chance. This year I will find who killed you. This year I will end this and let it all go. Dean turns twenty six in three weeks. When I was twenty-six I had been a soldier two years, Dean’s been one his whole life. Carter too. Neither Dean nor Carter have been with anyone for more than a few nights. Dean has a son, who he didn’t know about for three years because we were on the run, on the move. I’ve fathered two other children, who will never know a mother’s love either. Other than Carter’s. I’ve made our daughter not want children of her own. By the time Sammy is twenty-six this thing will be over, I swear. 

**January 5:**

Twelfth Night (by the old calendar). I talked to Jim tonight, Carter took the kids round to see him. The conversation after that has me spooked. Why? The first time I met the guy, he showed me Mary’s spirit and it turned itself into the guise of a hellhound. Since then, the things we’ve seen… why should anything I see or hear from or with Jim scare me? no clue.

When I hung up I felt like… not like someone had walked over my grave, but like I’d just walked over his. I asked him if he was okay, he said he had never been better. Maybe I am jumping at shadows, but I am worried about him. So I had Carter leave the younger kids with Bobby, and head back to Jim’s.

**January 21:**

Seals of Saturn

**January 24:**

Dean is 26 now. When I was 26, he was a baby. Generations pass. Not handing off the family business to him anytime soon, though. He’s got his piece of it, Carter has hers. And we are pulling towards the end goal. I’m starting to tell him more about the demon problem. He doesn’t have the head for esoteric that Sam and Carter do. But what Dean wants’ to learn he learns. 

**February 14:**

Elliot is growing like a weed, six now, I need to head back to the Abbey.

**April 7:**

Carter taught me how to make Holy Water like Jim.

**May 2:**

Sam is twenty two today. Saw in a Colorado paper that a couple of hikers had gone missing at a place called Black Water Ridge. Twenty years ago, maybe eight people were killed up there. Cops called it a grizzly attack, messaged Carter.

**May 8:**

Adam is thirteen. Dear god, how time flies.

**May 17:**

This would be twenty seven years, Mary.

**May 21:**

Ben is ten today. I have not seen him in MONTHS.

**June 19:**

Grumorium Verum

**July 20:**

Bingo. California, New Jersey, Arizona. House fires. In each case, a mother killed and one of the survivors is a six month old. Both Sammy and Elliott are on that list. Stopped in to see Elliott, she wanted to come home with me, it’s not time yet. I told her, soon. 

The fires and the ages gave you away. It’s a pattern and I can track it. You slimy bastard you gave yourself away, now I am coming for you!

I won’t tell the kids, yet.

**August 14:**

Last three weeks:

Tallahassee  
Baton Rouge  
Jackson  
Birmingham  
Atlanta

State records offices all look the same. Then same thing across the rust belt:

Columbus  
Lansing  
Harrisburg  
Indianapolis

Libraries in every county seat in West Virginia, looking for patterns in the weather records. Feel like I have been everywhere, like I’m living in a Johnny Cash song, only with demonic evil. Come to think of it, “Ghost Riders in the Sky” is a version of the Wild Hunt, isn’t it?

Carter would be able to answer that. Girl knows every song in the world.

**September 19:**

Autumnal equinox might be the next big breakthrough. Will know in 48 hours. Checked in with Dean and Carter. Carter ran out to Palo Alto to check on Sam. Dean is with Bobby and the kids. Haven’t slept in more than twenty four hours already. Remember old battlefield advice. Sleep and eat when you can. Because you never know when the next time will come. Should eat. Not hungry.

**October 3:**

Equinox a bust. Dean in New Orleans, Carter is in Colorado. I am in Jericho, Ca. trail of the demon that killed you, Mary, is cooling a little bit. People keep going missing from the area right around a bridge here. Started to look around, and it has all the hallmarks of a woman in white. Almost feel like I should drop this one and keep tracking the demon. But to do that, I’d have to let people die. And after all these years. I remember what H told me: A hunter never passes up a hunt. I had to kill him, but he was right about that. 

**October 4:**

La Llorona

**October 5:**

Glowing eyes.

**October 6:**

Too much news about exorcists, exorcism lately. It must mean something, something’s on the move something big.

**October 28:**

Got a phone call from the Roadhouse. And the last piece fell into place. I am on the trail now. Twenty-two years ago, and I’ve finally found the son of a bitch. Now I am going to take him down. Azalea.


	25. 2005 - Carter

**November 9, 2005**

_We found your journal, dad. You left it with the police when you disappeared following the Jericho case. Dean and I got Sammy to come back with us. I don’t know where you are but I hope we find you, and soon. I have my own journal, but I am going to be moving the information from it and Dean’s over to yours. One big index for the Winchester family. I figure now that the whole family is together we can probably work something out as far as who writes about what and when._

_Carter Winchester_


	26. 2006 - Carter

**July 21, 2006**

_In memory of the single greatest man I ever knew, **John Winchester** 1954-July 19, 2006. _

_Dad I promise we will find and kill Azalea for you if it is the last thing we do. He took out Sam’s girlfriend Jessica. And now Sam finally has that motivation you were always worried about. You wrote your journal to mom, like Bobby writes his to Karen. I think we are going to write our pages to you Dad. I don’t know how I got appointed story teller but I did._

_I never hated you, not the way you thought Dad. Shit, had I known how this was all going to play out I would have told you. You were so hard on me and Dean, molding us into solders, and then again with Adam and Ben. But Sammy got a free pass at everything, I felt like Dean and I were only ever cannon fodder for your “must protect Samuel Winchester at all cost” crusade._

_And I guess you were right._

_You promised there would be no surprises, but Elliott was a big one. I love her, don’t get me wrong… but killing Azalea also avenged her mother’s death._

_Two rights DON’T fix a wrong dad. There are so many bigger picture things you missed, so many clues between Sam and then Elliott had you been around that might have pointed you towards what was going on. I don’t know what the future holds for us Winchesters, but I doubt it is a normal peaceful life._

_I have read your journal front to back, dad. I never understood how you thought we would go back to a normal life. There is no possible way for that to happen, **ever**. _

_You see, you raised us to KILL monsters, to destroy the supernatural things that go bump in the night. Do you know what that has taught me, dad?_

_It has taught me that fairy tales don’t exist; there is no escaping being a hunter. But I vow and Dean does to, that the Winchester line ends with us six._

_We will not raise another child in this life._

_Carter Winchester_


	27. 2006 - Carter II

**September 11, 2006**

_I remembered something today. Something about you, Dad. I remembered that you once upon a time you would sing with mom. In mine and Dean’s room. You sang to us songs you learned overseas._

_I have no clue why that memory emerged today. I guess it’s because Elliott was sick and I ended up singing to her for a long time, sang a lot of songs to her – The Parting Glass was one of them. I think you learned that on your way to ‘Nam._

_I wish now we would have talked to you about things, learned more about you as a father. Sammy and the younger ones deserved so much more than you ever gave them. I decided to read the journal, more than just the lore pages. I am writing comments as they come._

_I’ll carry the torch for your daddy. I was always your little girl. I never realized the way you felt – how much like mother I was and how much that hurt you._

_I wish now I could tell you that you never tainted me – Dean and I were selling us long before the idea came to you. I wish now I could tell you that you were always my hero. Mostly I wish you would tell US that you LOVE us, at least once. My heart can’t stop breaking._

_Carter Winchester_


	28. 2006 - Dean

**October 19, 2006**

_Carter mentioned that she was going to keep writing things down. Keep making a difference, if only for you. So we are adding to the journal, changing things, some pages we are going to have to completely re-write because they were damaged – I don’t know what you split on this thing, but damn._

_Adam suggested we rebind the leather._

_Sammy has some sort of fire burning at both ends, he is more than determined. He only wants revenge. I guess that is a good thing._

_I read your journal, front to back._

_There are so many things you never bothered to say to us, and I seriously don’t understand why you were not just open and honest with us from the word go._

_Fuck. I don’t do chick flick moments. Carter and I are headed to the bar. Hope you don’t mind. We would celebrate somewhere else, but…_

_Hell there really ain’t much to celebrate these days. There is nothing but tomorrow._

_Your son,  
Dean Winchester_


End file.
